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I always hated that the sport chrono clock is absolutely useless (unless you have the needed patience to make the stopwatch stop at "9:11" ;-)
About a year ago I did a bit of tinkering and replaced it with a VDO analog clock, following these instructions
Well, yeah that looks better, but is not very useful either.
In order not to bounce off the walls due to Covid-19 shelter in place I needed a new project and came up with this:
The analog water and oil temp gauges in our cars are very inaccurate and on the track my oil temp shows sometimes scary high temperatures.
Well I know the oil gauge is totally off (I checked with my AIM Solo), but it still troubles me.
So how about I replace the sport chrono with an accurate digital oil/water display?
But there are no aftermarket gauges available and the only way to get readings for the oil temp is to tap into the CAN bus (only water temp is available via OBDII).
I did a lot of research and finally decided to build my own CAN bus water/oil gauge from scratch, here is the final result:
It was tricky:
I used an Arduino micro-controller with a CAN-bus shield and a 128x64 pixel OLED display
in the picture you see on the left (under the cables) the CAN bus shield and to the right the Arduino (NodeMCU micro-controller), the black box to the very right is a 12V -> 5V power converter
Here is the 1.3" OLED display in the housing of an old VDO oil temp gauge (that I still had from an abandoned project)
The housing has 52 mm diameter and fits perfectly into the sport-chrono wart.
To get to the CAN bus you need to tap into the wire harness on the left of the fuse panel (the CAN bus plug that goes to the sport chrono clock does not carry the data for water and oil temp - now I finally understand what a CAN bus gateway is for :-)
And the really tricky part is that Porsche does not publish the information that you need to decipher that data on the CAN bus:
You need: the Porsche CAN-Ids, the significant values and the formulas to convert them.
But here I got lucky and found exactly ONE post where someone reverse-engineered it.
Overall less than $100 spent and the whole project probably took me ~20 hours, including programming the Arduino and hacking the VDO oil temp gauge.
What do you guys think? Good? Bad? Ricer?
Great things from fantastic nerds. Me like! Tapping into the canbus, recording on a rasberry pi and getting the data out.
I always hated that the sport chrono clock is absolutely useless (unless you have the needed patience to make the stopwatch stop at "9:11" ;-)
About a year ago I did a bit of tinkering and replaced it with a VDO analog clock, following these instructions
Well, yeah that looks better, but is not very useful either.
In order not to bounce off the walls due to Covid-19 shelter in place I needed a new project and came up with this:
The analog water and oil temp gauges in our cars are very inaccurate and on the track my oil temp shows sometimes scary high temperatures.
Well I know the oil gauge is totally off (I checked with my AIM Solo), but it still troubles me.
So how about I replace the sport chrono with an accurate digital oil/water display?
But there are no aftermarket gauges available and the only way to get readings for the oil temp is to tap into the CAN bus (only water temp is available via OBDII).
I did a lot of research and finally decided to build my own CAN bus water/oil gauge from scratch, here is the final result:
It was tricky:
I used an Arduino micro-controller with a CAN-bus shield and a 128x64 pixel OLED display
in the picture you see on the left (under the cables) the CAN bus shield and to the right the Arduino (NodeMCU micro-controller), the black box to the very right is a 12V -> 5V power converter
Here is the 1.3" OLED display in the housing of an old VDO oil temp gauge (that I still had from an abandoned project)
The housing has 52 mm diameter and fits perfectly into the sport-chrono wart.
To get to the CAN bus you need to tap into the wire harness on the left of the fuse panel (the CAN bus plug that goes to the sport chrono clock does not carry the data for water and oil temp - now I finally understand what a CAN bus gateway is for :-)
And the really tricky part is that Porsche does not publish the information that you need to decipher that data on the CAN bus:
You need: the Porsche CAN-Ids, the significant values and the formulas to convert them.
But here I got lucky and found exactly ONE post where someone reverse-engineered it.
Overall less than $100 spent and the whole project probably took me ~20 hours, including programming the Arduino and hacking the VDO oil temp gauge.
Maybe a dumb question but is it possible to get the 997 SC dial to work like ones on a 981/991? The later car's SC operates when the ignition is on and at least you get a clock that you can use, even with the tiny hands. There must be some programming change or is it impossible to modify? Thanks
Quick update to my Sport Chrono project:
I found a nice round color display and started project.2
Below are a few snaps from my prototype
The gauge now has two bars that change color with temperature
And if the temperature goes into "red" the dial will flash.
Oh yes and since it's a high-res color display I also added a Porsche splash screen, because why not?
What you do still amazes me Hatzen... I have been diying stuff for so long but this one I will not attempt... if you build something that will be easy to install count me in for sure... but I prefer something less loud than your latest prototype... analogue looking gauges imitating our oem gauges or at max digital readouts similar to the readouts on the display under our tach would look best imho, something that does not stand out but blends into our dash and be more useful would be best... again hats off to what you can do... it's amazing!
What you do still amazes me Hatzen... I have been diying stuff for so long but this one I will not attempt... if you build something that will be easy to install count me in for sure... but I prefer something less loud than your latest prototype... analogue looking gauges imitating our oem gauges or at max digital readouts similar to the readouts on the display under our tach would look best imho, something that does not stand out but blends into our dash and be more useful would be best... again hats off to what you can do... it's amazing!
Thanks for all the compliments The whole thing started when I tried to find a distraction during Covid lockdown. I had no idea about microcontrollers etc at all before that. But I have to admit that I have a programming background.
Yeah, I'm wondering myself if I overdid it with the "loudness" here. But the main purpose of the gauge is to warn me on the racetrack when the oil/water temp gets too high and I need something "in my face"
But yeah, maybe I try a black and white version with needles one day. I'm not happy about the font I am using, I'm still looking for a font that looks more like the font used in the gauge window in our 997s.
I think version 1 is way more subdued and if I don't like version 2 I'll just put V1 back in.
The problem with productizing is that in order to get the oil temp you need to tap into the CAN bus (it sounds way more scarier than it actually is)., and I think that most people will shy away from that (can't hold it against them)
Also I have to pay full price on all the parts, the parts alone are around $75 give or take and if I want to pay myself at least a little more than minimum wage I would have to price it between $200 and $250 and I believe this is just too expensive.
Initial production will surely be more expensive and as you produce more, well you know where I'm going.. I think that your product is something 80% of the members here would want to have on their sports chrono equipt 997s... I'm sure the more generous of us can help it get going by buying the more expensive initial products- with the porsche tax and as the numbers grow the price should come down to more affordable levels... of course unless the upgrades come which I am sure you are more than capable of... eg.. your gauge can shift from oil temp/h20 temp to a clock to oil pressure to fuel mix, turbo boost etc etc in one gauge!!!! Wow!! Or for track use it can be a shift light on red line!!
Thanks for all the compliments The whole thing started when I tried to find a distraction during Covid lockdown. I had no idea about microcontrollers etc at all before that. But I have to admit that I have a programming background.
Yeah, I'm wondering myself if I overdid it with the "loudness" here. But the main purpose of the gauge is to warn me on the racetrack when the oil/water temp gets too high and I need something "in my face"
But yeah, maybe I try a black and white version with needles one day. I'm not happy about the font I am using, I'm still looking for a font that looks more like the font used in the gauge window in our 997s.
I think version 1 is way more subdued and if I don't like version 2 I'll just put V1 back in.
The problem with productizing is that in order to get the oil temp you need to tap into the CAN bus (it sounds way more scarier than it actually is)., and I think that most people will shy away from that (can't hold it against them)
Also I have to pay full price on all the parts, the parts alone are around $75 give or take and if I want to pay myself at least a little more than minimum wage I would have to price it between $200 and $250 and I believe this is just too expensive.
Not to be contrary but ...
There's a lot of dislike for the wart. Also for the fake water temperature gauge. My guess is 200 to 250 would find takers.
The CANBus could be grabbed off of the OBD II port. Right now I've got a splitter cable on mine to power my V1 with remote display as well as a 9xx OBD DO unit which is where I get the data for water temperature and other things like fuel trim transfered by Bluetooth to my phone screen.
The phone screen is OK but requires effort to interpret. I would love a nicer readout for water temperature like you have done.
12-21-2021, 01:04 PM
The whole thing started when I tried to find a distraction during Covid lockdown. I had no idea about microcontrollers etc at all before that. But I have to admit that I have a programming background.