Megasquirt Arduino Teensy MSP430 CAN I2C Gauges

A demonstration of some hacked together code showing my idea for Megasquirt driven gauges. The Megasquirt broadcasts all the information over CAN (Controller Area Network) to the Teensy 3.2 (a very powerful arduino based microcontroller). The Teensy digests all that information and sends out commands over an I2C network to the slave modules that run on an MSP430 based microcontroller. Each gauge (or cluster of gauges) will have its own unique hardware address on the I2C network.

The stepper motors are driven directly from the MSP430, thereby greatly simplifying design. I will also add the option to have indicator leds (for example a check engine light, shift light, etc...)

Each gauge module (or in proper terms "node") will only have 4 wires going to it, and they will be daisy changed from the previous node. Power and ground, then two wires for the I2C network are all that are required, making it a very powerful, yet simple and efficient system.

Nate

[Winha]

This is very cool project. I saw some guy replace good old gauges with aftermarket ones, but this is far better approach. If you can make a list of parts for this I'm pretty sure there will be people interested in it. Keep it up and post a video of them working in your Celica. Thumbs up!

[Foxau]

Yeah it's still an active work in progress. To smooth out the jittery needle all I needed to do was raise the smoothing value a little in TunerStudio and it calmed right down. Right now I'm integrating the gps module for the speedometer.

[Foxau]

No ABS in a 77 Celica. :) it'll be easy to calibrate once the gps is working the first time. Just take the actual speed and divide that by the pulses from the sender. It's easy to modify and fit a GM style electronic speed sender to the transmission.

[PeteClio]

Do you k ow how i would get my needle to do a sweep?

[ForgedEggs]

Hey man are you still working on this? I might have a suggestion for smoothing out your RPM gauge without just silly value rounding.

If you're interested I can dig it up for you, it's a delta correction formula that I think will work great.

[Foxau]

I'm trying to find a good way to make a fallback for when the gps can't get a good fix. More than likely it will be the speed signal. I'm adding a supercap to the gps to keep it "warm" all the time so startup won't be an issue. But in the event of an obstruction like buildings or trees a backup would be good to have.

[Saaketti]

Hello. Are you using any CAN transmitter between MS and Teensy? I couldn't fiqure it out from the video. I'm so new in the coding and all of this micro controller stuff that everything is difficult. I bought Teensy 3.2, gps module and motor cotroller for the basically same idea that you are doing. I would like to have much help on this.

[tonytonys]

I really want to do this for my S30. I need a speedo, tach, water temp, oil psi, and boost/vac. But I never done it before. Where can I find a good place to learn?

[teknasutra]

Very cool what you have going there. However I d not understand why you don't just go from ODBII via Bluetooth to a large tablet in dash for everything you could want.

[markh.]

Hi, doing a similar Arduino-based gauge cluster for my Megasquirted Delorean. Question: you mentioned smoothing the pointer steppers by changing smoothing in TunerStudio. Did you do that using General Settings / Input Smoothing Lag Factors, or are there some CAN data output smoothing settings (that I can't seem to find)? Thanks-really cool project!

[ryekbaum]

slowly researching a sim project, repowering my 45 chevy truck with a vortec 4200 Inline 6 & 4L60E, going to be running a MS3x and GPIO trans controller (MSshift if I recall the name) im curently working on reworking all my factory gauges with stepper motors and hiding a OLED display in the speedo (making it not visible when off) for some other read outs on demand. Was going to build an Arduino mega with three stepper controller shields and a can bus chip ( MCP2551 maybe ) But I think I like the Teensy (3.2) setup a bit better, any Idea what I2c controllers you are going to use for the gauges? Also What does the protocol look like from the MS3? I haven't got my MS3 as Im still rebuilding the donor motor so just trying to plan at this point.