Bongo Maschine v1.0

[bongojoe]

Behold my latest invention - the Bongo Maschine!







It's like HAL9000 for the Bongo, but without the attitude:

Features:

• • Inside temperature
  • Outside temperature
  • Leisure battery voltage
  • Starter battery voltage
  • Digital 24hr clock
  • Ice warning light
  • Self-dimming backlight
  • Immense sex appeal

I discovered the Arduino a few weeks ago, and thought it would be great to set myself a Bongo project to get my head around the basics. As often happens when I start these things, it grew arms and legs and consumed many hours but I'm rather pleased with the results.

Time aside, the total cost of the finished package was very low:

Arduino Nano clone: £8.58
20x4 LCD display: £12.20
Tiny Arduino real time clock: £3.19
Single Din blank panel: £3.99
Temperature sensors: £2.80
Project enclosure: £6.00
Odds and ends: £5.00

Total: £41.76

Oh, and I left a USB cable tucked away behind the glove box so I can reprogram and upgrade the software any time I like...

[Simon Jones]

Looks very neat. I have considered doing similar, perhaps using a Pi. Would be useful as engine temperature gauge. How tricky was the software to do?

[bongojoe]

Looks very neat. I have considered doing similar, perhaps using a Pi. Would be useful as engine temperature gauge. How tricky was the software to do?

Thanks!

The software was the easier bit for me – I know a couple of other languages and basic programming principles are the same. There's tons of Arduino examples and reference online, and lots of helpful people in the forums when you get stuck. The electronics was much trickier, my knowledge is basic at best.

[winchman]

That's excellent

[Driver+Passengers]

I likey!!!

[bongojoe]

@Driver+Passengers - I did a bit of searching on these forums for other Arduino projects, and found your thread with the LCD display and multiple temperature sensors. Did you ever get it working? Particularly interested in what you managed to squeeze onto that display!

[Driver+Passengers]

I never actually put more than one DS18B20s on the van, and in fact there are currently none. I've removed all electronics.

For a while, I had a 5V pressure sensor in the header tank and was sampling the throttle position sensor, in order to diagnose an apparent blown head gasket, reading from an RTC and logging it all to SD card, importing to OpenOffice to chart my drives.

What I did do was start to put together a bunch of Arduino code for a GUI toolkit or widgets, for displaying values, labels, bargraphs, etc...

The thing I found most useful was incorporating an SI Units library to do stuff like this...

Code: Select all

typedef units::SiUnits<0,3,-1,-1,0,0,0,0,0> PressureSensorVoltageResponse; //(mV/kPa)
const PressureSensorVoltageResponse FREESCALE_SENSOR_RESPONSE = 12.1 * (units::mV / units::kPa);

const units::Pressure               FREESCALE_SENSOR_OFFSET   = 1*units::atm;

units::Pressure FreescalePressureSensor::convert(const AdcReading& adc)
{
    const units::Voltage  voltage  = adc*ADC_V_UNIT;
    const units::Pressure pressure = voltage/FREESCALE_SENSOR_RESPONSE;

    //TODO take FREESCALE_SENSOR_OFFSET from another (open) sensor
    return pressure-FREESCALE_SENSOR_OFFSET;
}

The compilerwon't let you screw up calculations - real-world values are typesafe.

[Northern Bongolow]

yes------------------------- i agree with matt. --------------------------------------------------------------------wot.

[blobber]

English subtitles ???

[Driver+Passengers]

Come on... keep up, folks!!

[jimmo62]

I've been thinking of doing an Arduino project to read the ECU error codes, looks like the hardware you have here would do the job nicely. Time to visit the shops for some components methinks!

[lazyb5]

Hi guys didn't understand most of it. But I went ahead and bought an arduino uno and a 20x 4 display and some stuff. I'm going to have a go building one similar to joes but to read things like boost pressure, as well as battery volts, any help with code would be great joe as I don't even speak English properly.

[bongojoe]

Happy to share my code if it's any help, or just offer some pointers!

[lazyb5]

Thanks Joe that would be great to see how the code works. All my stuff arrived this morning so hopefully I will start tinkering tomorrow. I went with an i2c controlled display so not to have too many pins to wire up but I`m now not sure if this was a good idea to start with. As I say i1m going to start small, even getting it to flash an led will be a triumph for me but everyone needs targets. For the cheap costs that this was to buy if I can understand how it works and learn a little code I see lots of things I may want them to do. I will keep you posted.

[the1andonly]

I have no known fault codes (97 4x4 2.5) but would like create a couple, easily reversable to evaluate a test method. Any ideas? simple sensor leads easily unplugable that would cause no damage.