“Boot lid is flapping in wind.”
“Turn off the choke, dolt.”
“Bonnet unsecured.”
“Engine will overheat in 5-4-3-2-1”
3 Likes
Outstanding Ray ! You’ve done amazing work !! I too am anxiously awaiting your release. Brilliant!!
Very impressive Ray !
Marco
Getting really close now… The electronics is working wonderfully. I’ve gone through the UI several more times, and made a lot of changes. I’m now really happy with how it all looks and works.
Here is an introduction to the UI. These are all actual screen captures, from an Amazon Fire tablet. A couple of them are spliced together from two separate screencaps, since they are too long to fit on the screen all at once.
First, every page of the UI contains two shared elements. At the top of every page are three “lighting mode” buttons:
These do the exact same thing is the “Panel Lights” switch on the cars dashboard.
At the bottom of each page are three “Navigation” buttons, which are used for navigating between the several pages of the UI. So, you can easily get from any page, to any other page.
When the UI is opened, the first page displayed is the “dashboard” page, which shows “virtual gauges” for coolant temperature, oil pressure, fuel level and battery voltage. These gauges will always show the exact same values displayed on the cars gauges.
As most of you are by now aware, these four gauges can (optionally) operate in “AutoColor” mode, where the lighting color is determined by the gauge value. These colors are shown in the gauges of the dashboard page, except that where the dashboard page shows “hard” transitions from one color to the next, on the actual gauges there is a transition, over a small range of values. For example, the transition from blue to green on the temperature gauge occurs gradually over a span of 10 degrees.
These gauges can also (optionally) be configured to give “alerts” when the gauge value enters a “danger zone”. The “alert” can be either the gauge lights blinking full-brightness read for 10 seconds, or an audible beeping, or both. For example, the oil pressure gauge will issue an alert whenever oil pressure drops below 10 PSI. High coolant temperature, or low fuel level will issue an alert. Either abnormally low or high Battery voltage will issue an alert.
The next page is the “Lighting Configuration” page, which is where all lighting options are configured:
There are three complete groups of settings for lighting, one for each of the three Panel Lights switch positions. Each group of settings contains a color selection, the “AutoColor” option, separate brightness settings for the large gauges, small gauges, and the “Legend” strip under the row of toggle/rocker switches, and the enables for Visible and Audible “alerts”.
Note in the screenshot that the “DISABLE VISIBLE ALERTS” button is highlighted in green, indicating VISIBLE ALERTS are enabled, and clicking the button will disable them. Conversely, the “ENABLE AUDIBLE ALERTS” buttons is greyed out, indicating AUDIBLE ALERTS are disabled, and clicking the button will enable them, which will also change the button color to green, like the VISIBLE ALERTS button.
Similarly, the Save and Cancel buttons are greyed out, indicating they are disabled. If any setting is changed, those buttons will be highlighted, letting the user know a setting has changed, and those changes can be either saved, permanently changing the configuration, or discarded, leaving the configuration as it was before any changes were made.
Next up is the “Fuel Sender Calibration” page, which is used to calibrate the fuel sender, so the fuel gauge reads more accurately.
The calibration process is quite simple. Drive the car until it reaches whatever fuel level you consider “empty”. Call up the Fuel Sender Calibration page, and click the “Start” button. It will change to this:
Add one gallon of gas, then click the red fuel pump icon. This will capture the reading from the sending unit, and the screen will change to this:
Add another gallon of gas, and click the red fuel pump icon. Each time you do this, another calibration point is captured, and another red fuel pump is added to the screen. When the tank is full, click the Tank Full button, and the new calibration table will be saved.
Due to the geometry of the fuel sender, when it “bottoms out” there is about two gallons of gas left. So, when I calibrated mine, I pumped ALL of the gas out, using the fuel pump, then put two gallons in, and called that “empty”. I then did the calibration. So far, it was worked wonderfully - MUCH more consistent, and accurate, and MUCH more linear, than with the stock gauge.
The last page of the UI is the “Gauge Calibration” page:
The stepper motor gauges need to be calibrated, so the software knows the exact positions of the markings on the gauge. For each gauge, only a single point is required, the so-called “calibration point”. For the Temp gauge, this is the 70C position. For the Oil Pressure gauge, this is the 40 PSI point. For the Fuel gauge this is the 1/2 full point.
Note the three buttons just below the Lighting Mode buttons, labelled “Temp Cal”, “Oil Cal”, and “Fuel Cal”. These are used to select which gauge is to be calibrated. As soon as a gauge is selected using these buttons, the gauge needle will move to its calibration point. If the needle is not properly aligned to the marking on the gauge face, simply use the +/-1 and +/-5 buttons to move the needle until it is perfectly lined up. Finally, click the “Save” button, and the new calibration point is saved, the gauge is reset, and again moved to its calibration point. This time, the needle should be perfectly lined up with the gauge marking.
This page also temporarily over-rides the sensor input for the three gauges, so by using the +/-1 and +/-5 buttons to “simulate” any gauge reading, and both verify that the gauge needle reads correctly, but also that the lighting responds as you want. As soon as this page is exited, or the browser is closed or disconnected, the gauges all return to normal operation.
Well, that’s about it! It’s so simple, even I can understand it!
Regards,
Ray L.
8 Likes
How do you post drool… amazing.
I take it after cal the “virtual fuel gauge” on the UI will have a numeric gal reading in addition to the E-F sweep ?
Sooo cool Ray
Absolutely freaking amazing, Ray! This is really cool all the way around. Any thoughts on pricing?
Not until I have it production-ready. But I think it will be very reasonably, considering all it does, and the ridiculous cost, and poor reliability, of dodgy new gauges and senders.
Regards,
Ray L.
Hope it costs less than the twenty new oil pressure sending units I have purchased over the past twenty seven years…
Wherever space and time interact, there is information, and wherever information can be ordered into knowledge, and knowledge can be applied, there is intelligence.
Pavel Mirsky, mid 21st Century Russian General
1 Like
After clearly thinking about this, it appears certain you can sell your product wholesale to the various parts houses, and they will likely give you stocking orders. Good luck, Ray. This is sincerely one of the most incredible Jaguar projects I’ve ever seen. If it works in both positive and negative ground scenarios, you have a product for multiple models in the Jaguar marque, as well as others.
2 Likes
It does not care about polarity…
Regards,
Ray L.
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Triumphs, MGs, Lotus’, TVRs, Awful-Squeeleys, numerous other Brit cars.
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Extremely cool! Full wave bridge rectal fire? Do you also have series regulator (or switching power supply) so either 6V or 12V?
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I don’t even want to know what that means . . .
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Too much cayenne will do that.
3 Likes
He’s just being anal about it. . .
Those can be a Pain in the A$& to build
yea, buddy slipped me a sip of his margarita… problem is it was a GHOST PEPPER marg… HOLY SHUT! couldn’t trust a fart for the next 24hrs! Is this smart gauge related?
Don’t you just love auto-correct? 
There’s so much about electronics I do not know.
3 Likes
… smart ass.
