Carduino Installation Progress

We’ve just finished getting the cable installed for the Carduino, so I can get it installed in a more permanent manner.

The last two tanks of fuel had the jumper wires that were jammed into the connector, come loose, and so I’ve never really had solid tank data – in the last case, I saw the kMs increasing without any actual driving happening – that’s no good.

So fixing that, installed the cable more permanently, and I’ve nearly finished moving the circuit off the breadboard and onto some protoboard.

The next will be the case, I was contemplating a few alternatives, making it out of aluminium crossed my mind, but that has headaches with making sure no connections are shorting out and so on. Forget it. Acrylic was another option, MDF the next option.

I am settling on MDF, it’s easy to jigsaw, paints well, and at 3mm thickness with smoothed edges, isn’t going to be any issue.

The size of it with the arduino board and the circuit will be too big to sit similarly sized as a GPS. The solution to this would be to get a custom PCB made. I had issues getting a design together that I would think worked (but now I’ve soldered the board, perhaps it would be easier to design). I won’t bother now though, I’ll stick it further back down the dash, with the display facing me, the angle of the dash should make it less of an obstruction.

The task of soldering the cable into the connectors (I wasn’t going to cut them), is much easier with the Glove Box out, and since it was already out from when we fixed the leak, now is the best time for it.

Lack of light made the task very annoying, taking 2 hours to get the connections soldered in place (I thought 30 minutes!), the time increasing exponentially as light levels decreased (we really need to some lighting sorted).

I’ll add some more screens in code soon too (currently I have the ECU errors, and a second screen set for RPM, O2, Air Flow & Temp, Radiator Temp, Injector Pulse Width, and Octane (this is calculated).

The ability to add more / change the code on the setup is easy since the USB port will be accessible from the case I make.

I have the ability to setup displays for each of the items listed here (well, what the car supports anyway – no Turbo, and no Knock sensor here).

And I was still looking at EV conversions last night.
With a possible daily commute of between 20 and 40kM coming up, the very short trips will likely stop.

Next up for our car, Rust Repair. Still have to find the damned paint. You can’t exactly get a firewall from a wreckers.

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