Instrument Cluster - Teaser

[gottaBdope]

Wasn't gonna say anything till I was closer to done, but I'm so happy with the progress I made yesterday...

[Staz]

interesting . but do you intend on leaving the iphone / itouch there the whole time or taking it out per trip ?

[gottaBdope]

Leaving it. Its my old phone and I decided it would have better use this way than just my alarm clock in my room.

[daihashi]

Interesting, when will the details behind the what/why/how be posted?

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk

[gottaBdope]

I can later today. Already did a write up kinda on a private projects site, so I'll copy paste over. Yay spring break!

[iamshayan]

how do you press the buttons

[gottaBdope]

First I'm finalizing the placement of the phone, then gonna cut through the plastic front and seal the sides to make a kind of a tunnel for the touch screen.

[Turbavanttro]

Interesting. The info on the screen is pretty small to be practical, but still a pretty cool idea. If it works for you then it's a winner.

[gottaBdope]

The picture on the screen at that time is just a screenshot from the program...can def customize the screen with whatever gauges once the program has a car to connect to...and I don't know yet which program I'll go with.

[O2A4]

I think this is pretty sick

[gottaBdope]

Thanks! I'm waiting for people to poke holes in it and point out things I might not have thought of yet.

[onceover]

I cant imagine having to poke through my steering wheel at some buttons through a tiny little tunnel in the cluster. Good luck though

[gottaBdope]

Basically, I'd wipe my phone completely, only have maps and the obdii program on there, and all I'd need the touch screen for is to execute one of those programs. Not like I'll be texting or browsing AZ with my instrument cluster phone. I just want better live data in an easy to read space.

[Molotov]

[gottaBdope]

LOL!

Here's my post from the other site:

I’m really enjoying this mod and I have made a lot of progress in just two days.

I felt like my old iPhone 4s was being under-utilized being used as just an alarm clock, but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to use it for that I didn’t already use my current phone for. SO, I decided to upgrade the stock LCD screen for my Audi’s instrument cluster. Here’s some progress shots:






My plan for right now is to run iOS or Cydia and connect the phone to a wireless OBD-II dongle so it can display live data for the car and at a much better [visual] quality than any other screen options for this car. Could also use for navigation assuming it can still trigger gps.

Once I get the final seating of the iPhone, I’m going to cut in through the front plastic so that I can still use the iPhone’s touch screen. I’ll seal the “tunnel” walls and put a matte black button, similar to the odometer reset buttons, so that when pressed it pushes the home button for the iPhone.

I’ll run a standard iPhone charger and hardwire it to something on the ignition circuit for the car. Long term I’d like to figure out how to program the iPhone so that it doesn’t consider it’s own battery a power source so it turns on with the car and off with the car; to have some startup script where the phone auto loads the OBD-II software and still maintains touch screen functions; this may require a different OS (linux maybe) and then the issue is finding a program on that OS that can do OBD-II readouts.

I have longer term goals, but these short terms are good enough for now.

[iamshayan]

I cant imagine having to poke through my steering wheel at some buttons through a tiny little tunnel in the cluster. Good luck though

x2 only way I see this working is with a Bluetooth remote of some sort.

that being said, you still win all the effort points.

[n7plus1]

meh...points for the imagination...i would just sell the damn phone and do something else with teh money.

[daihashi]

I did something similar back in 1998... when I say similar, I mean the idea could be adapted to eventually become what you're showing here.

Back then I was building small computers to be mounted in the trunk of the car, and wiring it for Audio. In addition to this I built a custom single DIN sized screen that wired back to the PC's printer port. The screen/interface received it's data from a custom winamp plugin that would convert the specific song information to text and output it via the LPT port of the mini PC. The input to control winamp was done via a 10 key that I hacked apart and customized so that it became integrated into the car and did not look like a cheesey/tacky 10 key input. This is a crude description/explanation of the setup. To be honest, this was actually fairly complex since everything had to be hand built/written; there simply wasn't an aftermarket for anything like this at the time.

Taking this forward to what you're doing, and the obvious problem that others have pointed out (needing to stick your hand through/around the steering wheel); I would have either built a nano or pico PC, purchased a small 4" screen (or whatever size the screen in the cluster is), and installed a button somewhere along the center console that would let me flip through a set of predefined screens/guages/outputs. This is setup would actually be much easier to setup today than the prehistoric car MP3 systems I was building in 1998. If you went this route then you probably wouldn't have any need cut a hole in your cluster.

If you can find a way to wire a key to pins on the PCB board of the iphone that would allow you to control it like I describe here then that of course be even better/easier.

[daihashi]

I'm actually glad that you posted this up. Seeing this, and rehashing through things I've done in the past, has given me some really good ideas on how I could build a custom double DIN interface to replace my stock radio and also have it tie into my cluster. No idea if I'll actually do it, but it has me interested enough to scope out the costing to see if it would be worth my time. Thanks for posting up the idea!

[f1torrents]

L
My plan for right now is to run iOS or Cydia

IOS or cydia?
If you want the phone/itouch to turn on your gonna need IOS. No question...

[gottaBdope]

meh...points for the imagination...i would just sell the damn phone and do something else with teh money.

I rarely sell anything, don't like doing it...mostly just give stuff away or repurpose it. iPhones are still phenomenal gadgets and capable of a lot.

x2 only way I see this working is with a Bluetooth remote of some sort.

that being said, you still win all the effort points.

I'll get one of those cheapo $15 wifi or bluetooth (they have both) off ebay to try. And thanks, lol.

I'm actually glad that you posted this up. Seeing this, and rehashing... Thanks for posting up the idea!

I read all of that and you got pm...in a minute, haha.

IOS or cydia?
If you want the phone/itouch to turn on your gonna need IOS. No question...

Maybe so. Cydia is just the jailbreak, which it currently has. Prob just do bone stock latest ios.

[gottaBdope]

If you can find a way to wire a key to pins on the PCB board of the iphone that would allow you to control it like I describe here then that of course be even better/easier.

Could you elaborate?

I do have plans of a computer and full integrated system, but details on that are waaay in the future. The meantime, I'm working on the iphone cluster just to get experience with the cluster and live data. When I take my current cluster out, I can improve on the integration of the system.

So far, I'm viewing the iphone cluster as being able to keep all stock functions and obviously lose the stock screen, but hopefully not lose the stock info...and will gain customizable live data, more than what would have normally shown up, as well as gps functions. I think it's worth the loss of the stock screen :-D

[gmudan]

You can actually buy a separate digitizer. It's just a very thin plastic film that inputs the finger movements. I think you can put that behind the instrument cluster glass so you don't have to do that tunnel stuff. You will be able to touch the cluster screen and control the phone. Of course the digitizer connection will need to be extended.

[gottaBdope]

That's fckin amazing, thanks for the input. I'll look into that now.

[gmudan]

That's fckin amazing, thanks for the input. I'll look into that now.

iPhones 4's and up have the screen and LCD glued to the glass screen. If you can separate (takes sometime, and some floss) you got your digitizer right there. The digitizer will be attached to the screen, it's very tricky to remove that without damaging it. It's SUPER thin, like suranwrap but without the flexibility. If you have good soldering skills or know someone who does, they can split the digitizer connection and wire in an extension. Then you place the digitizer behind the plastic screen of the instrument cluster (3m glue, whatever) and put the iPhone as far as your extension allows. And done!

[f1torrents]

iPhones 4's and up have the screen and LCD glued to the glass screen. If you can separate (takes sometime, and some floss) you got your digitizer right there. The digitizer will be attached to the screen, it's very tricky to remove that without damaging it. It's SUPER thin, like suranwrap but without the flexibility. If you have good soldering skills or know someone who does, they can split the digitizer connection and wire in an extension. Then you place the digitizer behind the plastic screen of the instrument cluster (3m glue, whatever) and put the iPhone as far as your extension allows. And done!

I like the idea you have there, but realistically I would consider it an impossible task.

[gottaBdope]

Holy shit. That's awesome. I like to tinker but that may be above me...

[daihashi]

Could you elaborate?

I do have plans of a computer and full integrated system, but details on that are waaay in the future. The meantime, I'm working on the iphone cluster just to get experience with the cluster and live data. When I take my current cluster out, I can improve on the integration of the system.

So far, I'm viewing the iphone cluster as being able to keep all stock functions and obviously lose the stock screen, but hopefully not lose the stock info...and will gain customizable live data, more than what would have normally shown up, as well as gps functions. I think it's worth the loss of the stock screen :-D

actually, gmudan's idea is far superior to mine. If I were to do this with an iphone, then that would be the route that I went with.

The only thing I don't like about using the iphone is the limitation of the software and what can be displayed on the screen. If I were to do this myself then I would probably build a GUI/interface around ME7logger, and use it's live streaming data to update the screen in real time(it is superior to many other things in terms of "real time" data). I know torque works right out of the box, but that interface seriously clashes with the rest of the interior of the car. Plus I would not be limited to the number of outputs/guages that Torque limits you to... and I could choose the format of how I wanted that data to be displayed.

This is too much work for most people, and even for myself it would be a lot of work, but if I were looking to build a true carputer with full integration (or at least pretty damn good integration) then I personally don't see too many alternatives aside from going full custom.

I can give you details of my past carputer builds, but they are so old that it wouldn't be too applicable to what you want to do aside from the basic concept. Technology has come so far, and I have learned a world of knowledge since that era too... my approach, at least when you look at it from the low level details, would be drastically different from what I did back then.

[n7plus1]

Holy shit. That's awesome. I like to tinker but that may be above me...

digitizers are only a few bucks for a 4/4S. I personally HATE Apple as a company but i just recently came by one from a family member for free that took a dip in a hot tub and had a broken screen. I took it fully apart, cleaned it and replaced the screen/digitizer and now have a fully functioning fully unlocked i4 that im trying to get rid of.

/shamelessplug

[gottaBdope]

Lol, nice. I guess I just gotta man up and start tearing it down then. How was the rebuild process?

[f1torrents]

YouTube ifixit.
They have a dismantling and rebuilding video for every apple device.

[ADCS]

I like it. Interested to see your progress.
I did something similar about 10 years ago but in place of the double din head unit instead of the cluster. (Not on a B6)
I used an 8.4" touch screen monitor with a car computer connected to megasquirt EMS. Allowed me to see tons of live data and make logs.

[Siggiepop]

A4EFFORT

[NJeuro]

I think that's pretty impressive like to see process

[gottaBdope]

A4EFFORT

Nice! I like that :-)

Project on hold through the end of the semester. All car efforts are going towards finishing engine swap/build. Will update later.