Ok, so years ago I hacked together a remote version of TunerStudio to run on a little screen via a raspberry pi a slew of relays and general hackery. ... it worked but was glitchy. It was a good proof of concept and convinced me that having data on the dash would be a nice feature.
Fast forward and I've spent the past 2 years on and off working on this: it took about 9 months of starts and stops to make the display and the chip even talk to each other. I taught myself C++ Arduino and PCB design.
It's running approximately 3000 lines of custom C++ code that I wrote on custom hardware that I built and lives in a custom 3D printed housing.
*It receives a CAN BUS signal from the MS3ProMini (or any Megasquirt product) and can display any metric that the ECU has. So any base data point from the ECU or any data from additional sensors are available to display.
*There's a GPS module and antenna so that real-time speed, distance, MPG, trip data, altitude, heading, etc.. can be calculated and displayed.
*There's a built in TPMS system that uses off the shelf sensors that screw onto the tire nipples.
*There's a real time clock with a 10-year battery for accurate time display.
*It all lives in a custom 3D-printed housing with matching Porsche bezel. There's a hidden button that allows rotating of the screens. The bezel has a magnetic phone holder (or not, I printed both versions.)
*It has an anti-glare screen so that you can actually see it...
I've been playing around with what works and looks good and I've had versions with one screen, 5 screens 10 screens, etc...
Some of the screens I've made are:
*The above master display with 18 data points
*A VDO clock
*A trip screen with distance, mpg and the like
*A text screen with 20+ data points in text only
*A TPMS screen with a graphic of the car
*A shift light that goes form clear to yellow, orange and red based on the RPM
*A blank screen for night driving
I can make just about any screen with any graphic and any available data.
The gauge has active bluetooth for TPMS monitoring and can become a WiFi access point so that the user can interact with it and select from the available screens, set the time, set the injector rating, set the redline shift limit, and reset the current trip metrics.
Here's a video of it on the bench in a previous iteration where I had several 4-gauge silver dot displays that I've since consolidated into the above
Here's a video of the phone/computer interface.
All that's needed is a CAN BUS H&L, 12v power and ground.
And here it is from a drive to the dyno. Cool to see real time MPG. The delta MPG for the current trip (since gauge power on) is incorrect as it's factoring in idle and non-moving time. I've corrected the code and just need to push it to the gauge.
I plan on running it for a while to iron out any bugs and then making some more. I have the fixings for 10 additional gauges right now. Currently I'm only working with Megasquirt. While it's certainly possible to adapt the CAN BUS code to any ECU that outputs non-proprietary CAN BUS, I would need an ECU to test against and eventually a car running said ECU to finalize the code.
I've looked at some of the other ECU CAN BUS protocols and they're strange looking and not standard. That means it's a lot more work to adapt code. So for right now it's Megasquirt-only.
I anticipate starting to take "orders" in late summer/fall. Each gauge will be completely bespoke- every screen and feature, all the graphics, fonts and colors will be unique to each gauge I make. It's possible that I can make a very stripped down basic stock Megasquirt gauge but we'll see...