Getting the original guages to work

After we managed to make the gauges work by "implanting" servo's in them, we decided that it's not good enough, since we would like the original car to remain unmodified as much as possible.

The guages needles move according to the frequency that they receive. Since it is impossible to generate those frequencies from Windows (or any other non real-time OS), we needed to move into hardware (yeah!).

We decided to go with Atmel AVR microcontroller chips (mainly because that's what we could easily find in Israel). We got a sample of an ATMEGA16 and wrote some C code to generate the frequencies (WinAVR and AVRlib). Since this is the first time we used this platform it took us a few hours to get it working.

Generating the frequencies is not enough -- you need the PC to ask the microcontroller to generate the right frequency according to the speed/rpm in the game. Unfortunatelly, the AVR cannot speak directly with an RS-232 interface, so we had to connect a MAX232 chip in order to get it working.

The sequence is as following: there is a process on the PC which collects the games telemtry with Nascar 2003 APIs. It then translate the speed/rpm to commands which are written to the microcontroller via a COM port. The microcontroller parses the requests and set the frequencies to the gauges accordingly.

Nice :-)

Getting the original guages to work

After we managed to make the gauges work by "implanting" servo's in them, we decided that it's not good enough, since we would like the original car to remain unmodified as much as possible.

The guages needles move according to the frequency that they receive. Since it is impossible to generate those frequencies from Windows (or any other non real-time OS), we needed to move into hardware (yeah!).

We decided to go with Atmel AVR microcontroller chips (mainly because that's what we could easily find in Israel). We got a sample of an ATMEGA16 and wrote some C code to generate the frequencies (WinAVR and AVRlib). Since this is the first time we used this platform it took us a few hours to get it working.

Generating the frequencies is not enough -- you need the PC to ask the microcontroller to generate the right frequency according to the speed/rpm in the game. Unfortunatelly, the AVR cannot speak directly with an RS-232 interface, so we had to connect a MAX232 chip in order to get it working.

The sequence is as following: there is a process on the PC which collects the games telemtry with Nascar 2003 APIs. It then translate the speed/rpm to commands which are written to the microcontroller via a COM port. The microcontroller parses the requests and set the frequencies to the gauges accordingly.

Nice :-)

Videos available via eMule

As you've noticed many people have accessed this blog, which exceeded the limit to the server on which I publish the videos. Many people have asked to share the videos with eMule/Bittorrent. For now I've published them with eMule and will later on make them available with Bittorrent.

The ED2K link is here - feel free to share.

If you can,post these Videos where you can and write here a comment with a link to the files.

Enjoy,

-Yuval

Videos available via eMule

As you've noticed many people have accessed this blog, which exceeded the limit to the server on which I publish the videos. Many people have asked to share the videos with eMule/Bittorrent. For now I've published them with eMule and will later on make them available with Bittorrent.

The ED2K link is here - feel free to share.

If you can,post these Videos where you can and write here a comment with a link to the files.

Enjoy,

-Yuval

We’re on major geek sites - Hello World : )

Just came back home, checked the blog and saw something strange – comments…
It seems that somehow somebody found out about our little project here and posted it on diffrent web sites (Slashdot among them - You can read it here )

As veteran geeks we’re extremely FLATTERED!

Wow, we were not expecting that, definitely not on this early stage.
We still have big plans and a lot of work – feel free to come back again and check the progress (usually we work on weekends)

We are building this project for FUN - learning more about cars, electronics and software.

Stage 2 will be all about hydraulics (we hope)

Due to bandwidth limitation - our video hosting site went down – sorry. we are trying to find a diffrent solution so you can get to see the action and hear the sounds.

We’re lucky we had most of the pics on Flickr.

Thanks for commenting , we appriciate your feedback and support.
For the sake of quick swift visitors I’ll reattach some milestone pics.
Zvika

We’re on major geek sites - Hello World : )

Just came back home, checked the blog and saw something strange – comments…
It seems that somehow somebody found out about our little project here and posted it on diffrent web sites (Slashdot among them - You can read it here )

As veteran geeks we’re extremely FLATTERED!

Wow, we were not expecting that, definitely not on this early stage.
We still have big plans and a lot of work – feel free to come back again and check the progress (usually we work on weekends)

We are building this project for FUN - learning more about cars, electronics and software.

Stage 2 will be all about hydraulics (we hope)

Due to bandwidth limitation - our video hosting site went down – sorry. we are trying to find a diffrent solution so you can get to see the action and hear the sounds.

We’re lucky we had most of the pics on Flickr.

Thanks for commenting , we appriciate your feedback and support.
For the sake of quick swift visitors I’ll reattach some milestone pics.
Zvika