I've been thinking more about the gauges thing, and I think there is a solution that is almost 95% worked out already!
I have one of those little OBDII code reader/gauges that allow you to pretty much display anything you want. It works great for my little 1st generation Insight, which is not a very common car. It also works fine for my dad's Toyota 4-runner.
This gauge is great for tuning, but the display is difficult to glance at and see a measurement. For this reason, I wouldn't use it for something like a speedometer or current sensor, even though it can display these values.
However, SpeedHut has a wide range of guages that simply plug into the CAN bus, like the OBDII gauge. In other words, it's
easy to provide a real, analog gauge for anything that's streamed on the CAN bus.
That's where we're 95% there - Paul has made a CAN bus stream of data for the motor controller. If that data were OBDII compatible, there would be a world of gauges/displays available:
For example, the tachometer requires:
Quote:
• ECU/ECM that supports CAN-bus (SAE - J/1979), For more information about CAN-BUS click here.
• Easy Installation, connects directly into the vehicle's 16-pin OBDII Data Link Connector.
• 12 Volt DC Power
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Here's general OBD-II info; EV-specific stuff could easily be added here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD-II_PIDs
http://www.speedhut.com/about-freedomgauges.html#canbus
I don't exactly know the format, but it seems a couple format changes and all of this could be plug 'n play!
If a gauge doesn't exist already, it seems this format and a custom faceplate is all that would be needed for EV-specific gauges.
- E*clipse