Any Ardunio nerds in here?

[CamaroAJ]

In my can never leave well enough alone venture with building my car I want to have a gear display on the dash. I'm wanting to use a Ardunio Nano to run a 8x8 LED dot matrix to show 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-N-R and ideally be a reverse ground input to my chassis module to signal turning on the back up lamps. GM uses a position sensor on the transmission already and its a 4 pin 5v reference sensor that appears to be a hall effect switch. Anyone here mess with Ardunio's that could help me learn them and make this setup work? From the looks of it one part of the sensor picks the left to right movement of the shifter and the other part picks up fore and aft movement of the shifter. At this point I haven't bought anything so I'm not 100% set on any particular Ardunio or LED board, but I have them in my Amazon cart already. The wiring part I can handle no problem, its the writing code for the module I have never done before.

[blitzer454]

Here's a youtube video that should help.

[CamaroAJ]

Originally Posted by blitzer454

Here's a youtube video that should help.

Thats the video that kinda started this whole ordeal lol. I ordered some parts and created an account on Arduino's cloud to start messing with this when everything gets here.

[out2kayak]

Originally Posted by CamaroAJ

In my can never leave well enough alone venture with building my car I want to have a gear display on the dash. I'm wanting to use a Ardunio Nano to run a 8x8 LED dot matrix to show 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-N-R and ideally be a reverse ground input to my chassis module to signal turning on the back up lamps. GM uses a position sensor on the transmission already and its a 4 pin 5v reference sensor that appears to be a hall effect switch. Anyone here mess with Ardunio's that could help me learn them and make this setup work? From the looks of it one part of the sensor picks the left to right movement of the shifter and the other part picks up fore and aft movement of the shifter. At this point I haven't bought anything so I'm not 100% set on any particular Ardunio or LED board, but I have them in my Amazon cart already. The wiring part I can handle no problem, its the writing code for the module I have never done before.

There are a few things that you will want to consider:

1. What temperature range will the hardware be exposed to (interior with lots of solar loading in the summer, freezing temperatures, high amount of water in the air). The Arduino hardware is not really designed for this use case.
2. What sort of shock / vibe is the hardware going to experience. Consider heavy bass radios (if your doing that sort of thing), NVH from the suspension, etc. You'll need to accommodate that in the design.
3. Is it remotely possible that the hardware is going to get wet (like window open, etc.)? Again, another design constraint.
4. How much power will need to be provided to keep things operational? Will the electrical system accommodate it?

Arduinos are fine for learning and solutions that would hang around inside of a home but, from what I've seen, the quality is not there for something I would expect to last in a harsh environment.

OK, that out of the way, why not use something like a Silicon Labs gecko board, like:

https://www.silabs.com/development-t...t?tab=techdocs

https://www.silabs.com/documents/pub...user-guide.pdf

They already have displays on the card and are very low power. Very reasonable to program as well.

We use Xilinx chips for some of our solutions that may be favorable, but the above may be easier to do what your thinking.

Example for tiny gecko GPIO input:

https://github.com/hrshygoodness/EFM.../gpiointerrupt

Here is a weather station on the tiny gecko:
https://github.com/hrshygoodness/EFM...weatherstation

If your looking to make a custom card, Oshpark (https://oshpark.com/) is pretty reasonable. I've used them for robotics. You will have to pick and place parts, though.

If you want something that is designed from the ground up to support harsh environments, consider using someone like Riverside:

https://www.riversidemfg.com/

They do a good job and are great people to work with.

Just my $0.02.

[CamaroAJ]

Originally Posted by out2kayak

There are a few things that you will want to consider:

1. What temperature range will the hardware be exposed to (interior with lots of solar loading in the summer, freezing temperatures, high amount of water in the air). The Arduino hardware is not really designed for this use case.
2. What sort of shock / vibe is the hardware going to experience. Consider heavy bass radios (if your doing that sort of thing), NVH from the suspension, etc. You'll need to accommodate that in the design.
3. Is it remotely possible that the hardware is going to get wet (like window open, etc.)? Again, another design constraint.
4. How much power will need to be provided to keep things operational? Will the electrical system accommodate it?

This is the kind of info I was looking for.

1. It will be in a car and it gets kind of toasty in Texas so that is a concern.
2. I won't have a crazy radio. My plan was to have this in some type of enclosure with it possibly being sealed with potting epoxy or a silicone type product.
3. No, it would be under the dash so it will be away from water areas.
4. I was planning on making this a stand alone unit with a 12v switched input. The sensor only uses 5v and the LED 7 segment board is also run off 5v. I was also going to run a ground output when in reverse to trigger my InfinityBox to turn on the reverse lamps.

[out2kayak]

Originally Posted by CamaroAJ

This is the kind of info I was looking for.

1. It will be in a car and it gets kind of toasty in Texas so that is a concern.
2. I won't have a crazy radio. My plan was to have this in some type of enclosure with it possibly being sealed with potting epoxy or a silicone type product.
3. No, it would be under the dash so it will be away from water areas.
4. I was planning on making this a stand alone unit with a 12v switched input. The sensor only uses 5v and the LED 7 segment board is also run off 5v. I was also going to run a ground output when in reverse to trigger my InfinityBox to turn on the reverse lamps.

On 2, there is always NVH with any vehicle traveling down the road. We have different frequency profiles depending on how the chassis is setup and design our mechanical attachments to not transmit anything that would be harmful to the electronics. Also don't forget about the exhaust note and its impact. A bit of shock and vibration simulation should help, but normally we use test beds to shake and bake the hardware. See: https://blogs.solidworks.com/solidwo...ified-use.html

On 3, don't forget condensation. Last time I was in Texas I was in San Antonio in the winter. As memory serves, the windows can get fogged, which is moisture. Also, I seen a bunch of videos on Texas having power issues when it got cold.

On 4, are you also going to put in a voltage regulator that will shut it off if the battery discharges past a certain point (i.e., to a level that would not work with the electronics)?

Just a few things to think about when your planning. There are housings that are completely sealed to protect the housed electronics. Then use the case shell as a conductor of heat. Just have to do the math to make sure everything will work out well. We do this with desert sealed units and we have stirring fans in the sealed up case so as to eliminate overly hot spots and use conduction to a large air based heatsink. You can model this with Solidworks (see: https://www.engineersrule.com/therma...ow-simulation/).

[CamaroAJ]

Originally Posted by out2kayak

On 2, there is always NVH with any vehicle traveling down the road. We have different frequency profiles depending on how the chassis is setup and design our mechanical attachments to not transmit anything that would be harmful to the electronics. Also don't forget about the exhaust note and its impact. A bit of shock and vibration simulation should help, but normally we use test beds to shake and bake the hardware. See: https://blogs.solidworks.com/solidwo...ified-use.html

On 3, don't forget condensation. Last time I was in Texas I was in San Antonio in the winter. As memory serves, the windows can get fogged, which is moisture. Also, I seen a bunch of videos on Texas having power issues when it got cold.

On 4, are you also going to put in a voltage regulator that will shut it off if the battery discharges past a certain point (i.e., to a level that would not work with the electronics)?

Just a few things to think about when your planning. There are housings that are completely sealed to protect the housed electronics. Then use the case shell as a conductor of heat. Just have to do the math to make sure everything will work out well. We do this with desert sealed units and we have stirring fans in the sealed up case so as to eliminate overly hot spots and use conduction to a large air based heatsink. You can model this with Solidworks (see: https://www.engineersrule.com/therma...ow-simulation/).

2. I can mount the module case on rubber to help isolate it. Exhaust wise I'm planning on keeping it somewhat quiet, plus the addition of sound deadner.

3. We do get a lot of dew. If its in the car then that's a problem. A sealed enclosure should take care of that tho. Cold wise I don't plan on driving it too much when its that cold. Lots of power, San Antonio roads, and summer performance tires are not a good match.

4. Voltage wise its going to depend on what the module needs to run. My ECM has 5v power supply so that's a clean voltage source. If I need 12v I think there maybe a few sensors that I'm not using that I can pull the 12v from through the ECM which would also be a clean 12v vs. pulling from the battery that can very a lot.

You mean you can do it in solidworks, I'm lucky I can tie my own shoes lol. I do have a old heat sink from a blower motor resistor I saved that I could work into a module mount box. Actually I could model one up and 3d print it in such a way that the pins poke through the box and I could use thermal paste in between the circuit board and the sink.

[214Chevy]

Originally Posted by CamaroAJ

.

1. It will be in a car and it gets kind of toasty in Texas so that is a concern.

AJ...."kind of" is an understatement in Texas. How about just all out hot, smothering and similar to an oven.