Neato dash for megasquirt users

http://pidash.webs.com/

I'm sure most of you megasquirt guys have heard of the capabilities of these Raspberry Pis. Here's a complete dash setup for less than $300. I'm sure it can be built cheaper but I think there's some coding done to these so they immediately jump to Shadowdash upon booting up. Anyhow, thought I'd share.

That reflecting is going to be a pain in the butt through.

Quote
p0inT92
That reflecting is going to be a pain in the butt through.

Yeah I imagine at certain times it'd be annoying. I've got this anti glare crap on my tablet and it seems to cut down on getting washed out from the sun as well as reflections.

There's alot of different things a person could use that for. I'm really liking the option to use a 7" screen as a giant warning light should things head south with the motor.

That's pretty neat!
Dust is a great anti-reflection coating.

Nice website (not). No information at all, just a bunch of pictures that don't load and a "Buy Now" button.

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

I guess you could just run TS and use a tablet to display that. Lots of custom dashboards for that.

Yeah, the "website" is just a store. His Facebook page has some more info. Like most things megasquirt, there's not a ton of surface information, takes a little digging to get info.

Robert, you could technically tune with this if you wanted. The Pis are mini computers. So imagine having a mini laptop as your dashboard. You load in Shadowdash as the startup program so it goes right to whatever gauge set you built upon startup, which have endless possibilities. TS, datalogging, internet, geographical maps, music etc are all possible with this. You could order jimmy johns from their app halfway through stage and have it waiting for you at service! The only thing I'm not really liking is the 30sec boot up. I guess you could technically wire it to a switch instead of the ignition. Flip the switch, boot up and then start the car.

Quote
deaner
I think there's some coding done to these so they immediately jump to Shadowdash upon booting up.

You need root control of the tablet. once rooted you just install something like tasker on android to control autostart of any app or function. Look up tablet conversions on rx8's, lotsa info on how to do it, just don't ask questions on rx8club.com because they're all cunts over there...

Mine upon start, launches dashcommand to display OBD2 data & auto resumes music. when stopped, you put it to sleep & activate aiplane mode, so boot up is way faster than full start every time you start the car. No programming needed.

Quote
Philippe Bellefleur

Quote
deaner
I think there's some coding done to these so they immediately jump to Shadowdash upon booting up.

You need root control of the tablet. once rooted you just install something like tasker on android to control autostart of any app or function. Look up tablet conversions on rx8's, lotsa info on how to do it, just don't ask questions on rx8club.com because they're all cunts over there...

Mine upon start, launches dashcommand to display OBD2 data & auto resumes music. when stopped, you put it to sleep & activate aiplane mode, so boot up is way faster than full start every time you start the car. No programming needed.

Gotcha. That's for a tablet yeah? I have a nexus 7 that bounces between vehicles as a music box and code reader/diagnostic tool. I was all googly eyed when shadow dash(megasquirt) and VEMSDisplay came out a number of years ago. Im not sure how much from tablet stuff crosses over to these little gadgets. I know thy can run Microsoft, Mac and Android operating systems which is pretty stellar. I'll know in a couple of weeks, I just ordered a basic Raspberry Pi "kit" and a 7" touchscreen to play with. All new stuff for me and I'm pretty pumped to learn!

Soooooooo I bought one of these things. Not from that guy but a Pi and a display. It came in today and I've been monkeying with it for a couple of hours and have to say, these things are fricking sweet! Waiting for a power supply board thing to come back into stock so I can safely wire it to a 12v system. All said and done I should be coming in at half of what that dudes charging PLUS mine will have a safe power supply(as well as programmed shut down at key off) along with a case to house the whole thing.

What operating system does it use? Sez linux on a very information filled site but witch one?

Quote
Philippe Bellefleur
What operating system does it use? Sez linux on a very information filled site but witch one?

Linux is open source so there are dozens of different operating systems you can run on these. I'm on Raspberian for now but am going to try Ubuntu later this week Next is trying to get the droid OS to take so I can sort out VEMSdash for the folks with VEMS. These things don't have a hard drive. The operating systems and all files are on an SD card so you can bounce around to different OS depending on what you need from it.

ok, so you can run any os you want.

Kind of. Google will tell you more than I could. I'm learning as I go.

You can run any OS you can port.

Linux variants are the most common - Debian is a variant that has a lot of utilities and is commonly an early port to many microsystems. Raspbian is a variation of Debian, for instance. Ubuntu is also a variation of Debian, but with more desktoppy stuff. There are also even more stripped-down versions of linux available, but for most people the Raspbian/Debian variant has the best compromise of available-stuff vs space-required.

There's a BSD variant that runs on it, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you really really like BSD. It's a fine, fine OS but not something I'd recommend for a beginner.

If you want to run WinCE, there's a port of WEC7 and WEC13. If you do that though, I will point at you and laugh. One of the kernels I (somewhat involuntarily) support is WEC7/WEC13 and I keep ending up having to write or fix the default device drivers for it all the time and it's really irritating. Did you know that CE's USB stack is...uh...oh nevermind.

Side note: I'm not sure if it's all Androids or just the Samsung ones, but when they get to around 70C they will shut down all apps, dim the screen, and put up a dialog saying they're overheating. Nothing you can do about it, either. It'll recover fine when it cools down, but won't relaunch your app. Something to keep in mind if you're planning on installing them into a car with full windows and everything that can get pretty hot inside.

Other side note: cheap aftermarket Androids often don't have good glass and a prone to being scratched.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe