Custom dashes !
11-11-2013, 06:01 PM
#11
Registered
Here is my current boat, cross of analog and digital.. Find the digital displays easy on the eyes and get more viewing time.
If your all EFI, or diesel in my case, no real need for analogs gauges any longer, so the project parked in my yard is getting twin custom waterproof direct sunlight viewable touch screens. Many display options out there like these links below. If ya enjoy a little computer hacking and do some shopping around, they can be setup very affordable. Custom backgrounds, alarms, tale tales, all come as part of the packages. Seeing this digital trend being offered as stock now in 2013 offerings by some big name manufactures.
Clean and easy, only takes 3 wires per engine...
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If your all EFI, or diesel in my case, no real need for analogs gauges any longer, so the project parked in my yard is getting twin custom waterproof direct sunlight viewable touch screens. Many display options out there like these links below. If ya enjoy a little computer hacking and do some shopping around, they can be setup very affordable. Custom backgrounds, alarms, tale tales, all come as part of the packages. Seeing this digital trend being offered as stock now in 2013 offerings by some big name manufactures.
Clean and easy, only takes 3 wires per engine...
[/URL]
11-11-2013, 09:59 PM
#12
Registered
10 years ago I started messing with car PC platforms, before the common OEM units like you find stock from the dealer today. They are basically 12v, low power consumption, compact mini-ITX boards, connected to a touch screen monitor or mouse/joystick for control. OS is typically a compact version of Windows, Linux or even Android now, with custom software tailored to work with automotive apps, loaded on a solid state flash drive or 2.5 laptop hard drive.
Best Car PC Site
Marine PC Site
So now ya add your own peripherals like GPS, satellite radio, wi-fi, bluetooth, video cameras, and CAN [engine monitoring software] or what ever ya need and build a customer desktop that gives ya Nav, music, internet, and backup camera, along with a custom gauge clusters. Lately a some manufactures have came out with fanless, water tight PC cases, like this one.
Waterproof ITX Case
Then we need a display with a transflective or direct sunlight viewable screen, and waterproof. These are 1000 or 1500 "nits" units, and a must so you can actually view the screen in the sun. Typically companies like Garmin sell these nice marine units for a not so nice price. On my boat above, the 2 CAN monitors are waterproof, monochrome [black and white] displays that work well in sun and rain, but not what we want in a killer marine PC setup. And nothing at all against Garmin, but your stuck with what they offer for OS and options. So you need marine screen that wont break the bank. Here is a top of the line choice, in the same price range as a Garmin unit, but only an SVGA input from a PC.
Radiant Series Marine Monitors
Plenty of choices out there in the industrial touchscreen market that will fit our application, but I like building things and saving money. So lets put those nice $ 3-6k waterproof displays on hold and look at other options. That's where eBay comes in, with a huge supply of used Panasonic Toughbooks up there like the 19 and 29 models which can be had for under $700 and just so happen to use a 10"-12" waterproof, direct sunlight viewable touch screen. One might even just want to use the whole toughbook PC or tablet for our PC setup here. However a custom car designed power supply will boot and shut down the PC by power from the key, a nice option. So for my build I plan to use the displays from a toughbook mounted in the dash and build my own PC's from parts.
Last we tie our peripherals like GPS, depth sounder, and engine monitors that use CAN or NMEA "that 3 wire connection part" to our PC and load some nice software to lay out our custom gauge cluster. That's where companies like Noland Engineering comes in. Just one of the few companies I've researched that for under $700 hook ya up with everything ya need build that sweet one of a kind engine display on your PC. The options are only limited by imagination and what your willing to spend on parts. But if ya shop around, you could build a couple displays with Nav, gauges, cameras, MP3 linked stereo, depth finder all in a sweet flush setup for under $2000 each. One could even use a new Samsung waterproof tablet and create a pretty cool dash for even cheaper...
Hope that helps...
Best Car PC Site
Marine PC Site
So now ya add your own peripherals like GPS, satellite radio, wi-fi, bluetooth, video cameras, and CAN [engine monitoring software] or what ever ya need and build a customer desktop that gives ya Nav, music, internet, and backup camera, along with a custom gauge clusters. Lately a some manufactures have came out with fanless, water tight PC cases, like this one.
Waterproof ITX Case
Then we need a display with a transflective or direct sunlight viewable screen, and waterproof. These are 1000 or 1500 "nits" units, and a must so you can actually view the screen in the sun. Typically companies like Garmin sell these nice marine units for a not so nice price. On my boat above, the 2 CAN monitors are waterproof, monochrome [black and white] displays that work well in sun and rain, but not what we want in a killer marine PC setup. And nothing at all against Garmin, but your stuck with what they offer for OS and options. So you need marine screen that wont break the bank. Here is a top of the line choice, in the same price range as a Garmin unit, but only an SVGA input from a PC.
Radiant Series Marine Monitors
Plenty of choices out there in the industrial touchscreen market that will fit our application, but I like building things and saving money. So lets put those nice $ 3-6k waterproof displays on hold and look at other options. That's where eBay comes in, with a huge supply of used Panasonic Toughbooks up there like the 19 and 29 models which can be had for under $700 and just so happen to use a 10"-12" waterproof, direct sunlight viewable touch screen. One might even just want to use the whole toughbook PC or tablet for our PC setup here. However a custom car designed power supply will boot and shut down the PC by power from the key, a nice option. So for my build I plan to use the displays from a toughbook mounted in the dash and build my own PC's from parts.
Last we tie our peripherals like GPS, depth sounder, and engine monitors that use CAN or NMEA "that 3 wire connection part" to our PC and load some nice software to lay out our custom gauge cluster. That's where companies like Noland Engineering comes in. Just one of the few companies I've researched that for under $700 hook ya up with everything ya need build that sweet one of a kind engine display on your PC. The options are only limited by imagination and what your willing to spend on parts. But if ya shop around, you could build a couple displays with Nav, gauges, cameras, MP3 linked stereo, depth finder all in a sweet flush setup for under $2000 each. One could even use a new Samsung waterproof tablet and create a pretty cool dash for even cheaper...
Hope that helps...
Last edited by kidturbo; 11-11-2013 at 10:07 PM.
Platinum Member
11-12-2013, 09:44 AM
#14
Registered
Thanks for the info I have spent a lot time lurking on the mp3car site. I was looking for digital displays for my race car. Most aftermarket engine computers interface with windows so I was looking at something for that. I looked at the power supplies that have "start up-shutdown controllers etc. with a laptop you have set up with a charger that turns on and off with the ignition and use the power management settings to sleep when not charging etc to mimic that. in the endi didn't do but I look forward to seeing how your dash turns out. It never dawned on me to uses a tough book great idea. That would also be a great way to get a large chart plotter and alleviate all the downfalls of regular laptop based units.
11-12-2013, 02:23 PM
#15
Registered
Good luck guys, I haven't been active on the MP3car site for a while, but anything that's new and cool usually shows up on there.
I'm using a simi-rugged toughbook model right now and it's proven to be more than tough enough to handle everything I've thrown at it in 4 years. Just not rated to take full submersion like a full rugged model, plus lacks the direct sunlight touchscreen. So I'm fairly certain if you took the screen off any fully rugged and made up a vga cable adapter, it would be easy to surface mount in a boat and handle the elements.
You've probably noticed that large commercial boats have been steadily switching to PC based plotters, just so many options out there for affordable maps and data logging. Plus you can wi-fi link to your phone or a router and update on the fly. No need to buy a chip. I've also found radar overlay software / hardware that's very affordable too.
The main thing ya need to understand is the popular marine NMEA based stuff runs on CAN BUS protocol, and CAN is what every car in the world uses today. Your body control module talks to your power control module and so on. Industrial process control equipment also uses CAN. There is plenty of open source CAN software out there, and cool little "node" modules that you can custom configure to convert analog data to digital messages. Then for like $100 you can add your trim level indicators, drive temperature, and low oil level alarms to that digital dash. Even have the drive trim or trim tabs automatically adjust based on speed from your GPS. Pretty endless what you could do if everything is networked together.
I've been eying some of the cool stuff showing up on the dash of today's high end sport boats. They've been playing a little catch up, a new car uses CAN BUS to link everything from the radio to power windows now. Think a new Cadi has like 30 nodes now, so diagnostics is almost totally PC based now too.
I'm using a simi-rugged toughbook model right now and it's proven to be more than tough enough to handle everything I've thrown at it in 4 years. Just not rated to take full submersion like a full rugged model, plus lacks the direct sunlight touchscreen. So I'm fairly certain if you took the screen off any fully rugged and made up a vga cable adapter, it would be easy to surface mount in a boat and handle the elements.
You've probably noticed that large commercial boats have been steadily switching to PC based plotters, just so many options out there for affordable maps and data logging. Plus you can wi-fi link to your phone or a router and update on the fly. No need to buy a chip. I've also found radar overlay software / hardware that's very affordable too.
The main thing ya need to understand is the popular marine NMEA based stuff runs on CAN BUS protocol, and CAN is what every car in the world uses today. Your body control module talks to your power control module and so on. Industrial process control equipment also uses CAN. There is plenty of open source CAN software out there, and cool little "node" modules that you can custom configure to convert analog data to digital messages. Then for like $100 you can add your trim level indicators, drive temperature, and low oil level alarms to that digital dash. Even have the drive trim or trim tabs automatically adjust based on speed from your GPS. Pretty endless what you could do if everything is networked together.
I've been eying some of the cool stuff showing up on the dash of today's high end sport boats. They've been playing a little catch up, a new car uses CAN BUS to link everything from the radio to power windows now. Think a new Cadi has like 30 nodes now, so diagnostics is almost totally PC based now too.
11-12-2013, 03:13 PM
#16
Registered
Funny I was just researching nmea 2000 protocol and saw it is j1939 bus/heavy truck can protocol with marine specific add ons and that they should be able to coexist on the same network. should make new diesel stuff a snap to marinize. automotive to nmea2000 may not be as simple
11-12-2013, 04:37 PM
#17
Registered
Your correct. J1939 is the lower level protocol with NMEA2000 running on top of it. Both use the same basic 2 wire twisted pair that carries all the data, but they speak a slightly different language. Luckily some companies are making stuff to bridge all the gaps now.
Furuno IF-NMEA2K2 Interface Converter
http://nolandeng.com/ Thee guys have some cool stuff and the best dash software I've found.
http://www.seasmart.net/ Here is a NMEA2000 to your laptop or tablet by wifi, same as OBDII tools.
My Duramax boat runs only J1939, but the Teliflex GEM [Generic Engine Monitors] units had NMEA2000 inputs on the back. I attempted to hook a NMEA GPS unit directly into one, it worked but had some buffer errors / conflicts causing it become several seconds behind on actual speed that I couldn't iron out. So I found a GPS to pulse output by Dakota Digital, wired that unit into the vehicle speed input [VSS] on the Duramax PCM. Now the engine monitor reads a CAN data pid "SAE.VSS" and speed is spot on all the time. Just a simple GPS unit that will work with any speedo out there, but didn't exist one year ago... Plus that feature allowed me to use EFIlive to adjust tables in the factory GM PCM to help out idle speed control. Helped a bunch just letting the ECM know how fast the boat is moving, without having a transmission based speed sending unit.
I've learned enough playing with this diesel conversion stuff to drop about any automotive engine into a boat now and make it perform equal to anything Merc could dream up.. So as not to hijack this thread with all this technical stuff, maybe we can start one about on-board data networks and post these cool finds..
Furuno IF-NMEA2K2 Interface Converter
http://nolandeng.com/ Thee guys have some cool stuff and the best dash software I've found.
http://www.seasmart.net/ Here is a NMEA2000 to your laptop or tablet by wifi, same as OBDII tools.
My Duramax boat runs only J1939, but the Teliflex GEM [Generic Engine Monitors] units had NMEA2000 inputs on the back. I attempted to hook a NMEA GPS unit directly into one, it worked but had some buffer errors / conflicts causing it become several seconds behind on actual speed that I couldn't iron out. So I found a GPS to pulse output by Dakota Digital, wired that unit into the vehicle speed input [VSS] on the Duramax PCM. Now the engine monitor reads a CAN data pid "SAE.VSS" and speed is spot on all the time. Just a simple GPS unit that will work with any speedo out there, but didn't exist one year ago... Plus that feature allowed me to use EFIlive to adjust tables in the factory GM PCM to help out idle speed control. Helped a bunch just letting the ECM know how fast the boat is moving, without having a transmission based speed sending unit.
I've learned enough playing with this diesel conversion stuff to drop about any automotive engine into a boat now and make it perform equal to anything Merc could dream up.. So as not to hijack this thread with all this technical stuff, maybe we can start one about on-board data networks and post these cool finds..
