I30swimmer

ok so this past weekend i was driving my dads BMW and found out that after selecting a few things from the odometer button you can have the odometer read out things like Digital RPMs, vehical speed, engine coolant temp, exhaust gas temp, and about 20 other things. This Comes stock on i think all BMWs ..

Heres the question.

Is there any way
we can get our cars to read out this stuff, either in the odometer (best option) or in a small CHEAP screen somthing?

scopium

nope.. cause its all in the ECU .. and unless you're a computer engineer that does ECU for a living... you wont be able to

i'm a computer science major and do software programing for the state.. i've been studying the ECU for that past year and still cant get a full understanding of its core..




BMW engineering is very very high tech. and hopefully i will end up working for them

I30swimmer

yeah i bet they pay out like a mother!

did you know that the BMW key will tell the service rep at the service desk how many miles are on the car.. how crazy is that

spirilis

iTrader: (2)

RPM and stuff you could implement with a PIC controller tapped into the tachometer signal going from ECU to instrument cluster... I'm thinking of testing such a beast with a BASIC Stamp homework board sometime. (right now I'm working on getting a clean-looking DB9 serial port in a trim piece for fitting my OBD-II diagnostic hardware behind the dashboard and having just a single clean serial port to the lower left of the steering wheel for my Palm to hook into)

But for the RPM, and possibly a number of others, if you were willing to run the wiring you could get some of that crap on an LCD display using a PIC controller. Or, for the simple stuff like RPM/coolant temp/etc. you could use an OBD-II scantool based on the Palm, e.g. http://www.auterraweb.com/ using a suction-cup windshield PDA mount. pics of that here- http://spirilis.net/gallery/palm-mount

spirilis

iTrader: (2)

Actually if I can successfully program a BASIC Stamp to read and interpret the RPM and speedo signals, there's a lot of crap I could make. The limiting factor there would be sourcing out project boxes/etc. to build circuit boards that mount and look clean inside the vehicle (thinking the sunglasses case is a prime spot for some kind of gismo...)

nyautostyle

Pioneer N-1 has a few of those options....

Acceleration: Measures forward or backward G-Force and provides a peak hold indicator
Side Acceleration: Measures Lateral G-Force, indicating maximum cornering force, and provides a peak hold indicator
Angular Velocity: Measures turn rate
Speed: Measures your speed in Miles Per Hour (MPH)
Direction: Provides a compass with current direction: N, S, E or W
Slope: Indicates the incline or decline of your vehicle
Voltage: Keeps tabs on your vehicle’s electrical system, in volts
Clock: Displays the time