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Mismatched Gauge Solution


Guest bigC

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Guest Tim Norman

*bleep*s, can't do tomorrow!

Got gout in my right ankle, No servo on brake means I can't actually stop the car!

Edited by Tim Norman
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just a quick update. I've had the arduino gizmo attached to the gauge and the gizmo controls the gauge nicely without melting. However, The lowest the gauge will show around 1/4 tank. This is because there is a parasitic resistance in the digital pot of 70ohms, bugger! the next step is either to run another digital pot in parallel or control the stepper in the gauge directly from the Arduino. (or bend the sender arm but that's just giving in!)

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've gone a bit further down the rabbit hole and stripped down the gauge to directly control servo with the Arduino (I got bored one night and couldn't wait for another pot eBay). The stepper inside the gauge is this one (starting to wish I had just spent my £40):

https://www.axman.com/files/VID23%20manual%20EN-080623.pdf

 

I'm still thinking of other solutions before I further butcher my gauge (i have a plan).

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  • 7 months later...
Guest bigC

I'm resurrecting this project after getting sick at looking at a hole in the dash and playing Russian roulette with fuel. The good news is that it's got far simpler! In total, what's needed is one arduino nano (or Chinese copy), a transistor and a resistor (and bits of wires and board if you want to be fancy).

 

This will possibly only work for the microprocessor type gauges with smoothing (Smiths) but "could" work for other gauges too.

 

The basic principle to control the Gauge is to replace the resistance given by the sender with a transistor that is switched by a PWM signal from the arduino. This is interpreted by the gauge as resistance which is controlled by the PWM duty cycle. PWM is a high-frequency square signal where the on/off time ratio makes a digital signal look analogue (https://www.analogictips.com/pulse-width-modulation-pwm/). The easy part now is for the arduino to read the resistance from the fuel sender and output the appropriate PWM signal.

 

I'll get a schematic up when I've got this up and running but it looks promising and far simpler than I originally thought!

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