Building a digital inclinometer

Watching with interest.

Andy
(who just wanted to throw a big War Eagle in here for aubi1414)

 

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Once this comes as a kit I will definitely buy one. I don't have the mechanical inclination to do one from scratch.

 

OH Boy. I applaud you for your ingenuity. Great Job! I won't be needing one at this time. I pretty much a 0 degree person at my age.

 

I'd love a DIY kit, could just get some plexi glass and add it to the drop down sunglass holder.

 

But how can you be SURE you're at 0° if you don't have an inclinometer.

 

Updates!

I started up a forum over at my site for future owners of one of these things (and anyone else) to discuss:

http://forums.camerontech.io

And started up the store:

http://store.camerontech.io

I've got a couple things on there now but the Inclinometer is coming soon. I hope to have the latest revision of the circuit board today and assuming that works as planned I'll get the beta boards out next week.

It looks like the cost is going to be right around $100 for the unassembled kit. If you want me to put everything together first that'll be $25. Once I get the first shipment out to anyone who's interested I'll focus on building an enclosure so you can plug and play this thing.

Displays

• White on black (the default you see in the videos)
• Red on black
• Yellow on blue
• Black on green (for the old school look)

I'll have photos of all of these on the site soon. I also found a couple new OLED screens! These are much brighter and have much higher contrast, but aren't dimmable. They'll be available for an extra $20. I'll have these available in two colors:

• Blue on black
• Yellow on black

Photos and videos of these coming soon as well.

Power

The board will come with a screw terminal that you can use to non-permanently attach 12v power and ground. Or you can leave the screw terminal off and just solder the wires directly to the board. I'm also including a 9v battery cap. The last time I did a test I got about 5.5 hours of constant usage, at full brightness, with a standard alkaline battery. You can expect around double that with a lithium battery. Less if it's a rechargeable. The OLED screen is supposed to draw less power but I haven't been able to test it yet.

Features

You move through the menu and select your features via a 3-way switch (which you can mount wherever you'd like, although the included wiring hardness gives you enough wire to mount within 6 inches or so of the display). The menu gives you access to the following features:

• Inclinometer to measure pitch (forward and back) and roll (left and right) rotation of your vehicle. You can zero out the pitch/roll in case you do not mount the sensor perfectly level.
• Altimeter to measure current altitude. You can switch between feet and meters.
• Compass to show current heading. Displays both cardinal directions (N, NE, etc.) as well as degree bearing (0°, 45°, etc.).
• Thermometer to display current temperature of the sensor itself (note that this will not usually be an accurate temperature inside the cabin since the sensor itself generates a couple degrees of heat).
• Track Altitude will measure how much altitude change since the tracker was last zeroed out.
• Min/Max Altitude will measure the minimum and maximum altitude measured since the min/max was last zeroed out.
• Calibrate Altitude will let you set your current altitude while referencing a secondary device (such as GPS). The onboard altitude sensor measures atmospheric pressure which will change with the weather. For truly accurate measurements you will want to set the altitude based on a known reference. Relative measurements (change in altitude as you travel) will be accurate regardless.
• Brightness to adjust the brightness of the display (brightness adjustments not available on OLED displays)
• Factory Reset to forget all saved values and zeroed readings and return the unit to factory fresh.

That's it for now! We're in the home stretch!

 

Definitely excited! When you say we can select features, we can still display multiple at the same time right?

 

You mean like showing incline and altitude at the same time? I don't have that view right now but I could add it. The screen is only 16 characters wide and 2 lines high so there isn't a ton of room to play with. But I could put pitch/roll on one line and altitude on the second, does that work? I'll have to find some way to indicate which is pitch and which is roll...maybe a symbol or just a letter "P" and "R" maybe.

I'll try it out!

 

I think the scan gauge2 only has a 2 x16 screen
They only allow 3 letter abbreviations but that is plenty.
Example
ALT- altitude
'F- temp
NW-compass
INC/DEC- incline or decline that changes
Just a thought.

 

Yep! If you could do pitch, roll, compass, and altimeter in one that would be great! Or if you can only do two or three maybe you can let the user pick which ones. I'd probably prefer the compass over the altimeter when wheeling but some might prefer something different.

 

Hey guys,

I wanted to get a poll for screen colors. I'm just about ready to order a bunch and want to make sure I don't over-buy in a color no one wants. The only display I don't have on hand is the yellow OLED so I took a photo from the manufacturer's website.

White on black:


Yellow on blue:


Red on black:


Black on Green (for that old school look):


OLED Blue on black:


OLED Yellow on black:


For my money it's the blue OLED. The background is pitch black and the blue is nice and bright. The downside is that there's no way to control the brightness: it's on full at all times. This is fine for me because I'm probably only going to be using it during the day anyway.

I added a poll to the thread so please vote if you get a minute to spare!

 

VERY COOL

 

FWIW, I voted for red-on-black. Mine would actually get used in the dark quite a bit, and red is easiest on the eyes.

 

Red on black is my vote.

 

I voted yellow on blue because the red on black looks to close to Toyota orange

 

Production Update

The prototype looks great, hardware wise:



For the software I'm working on an inclinometer calibration mode. Each sensor seems to be a little different in its readings for pitch and roll so I'm adding a mode where you can rotate the sensor by hand in all directions and then save those measurements. That should make the sensor much more accurate than if I just tried to ship it with a default setting.

I'm also adding the default display mode of pitch, roll, altitude and compass all on one screen. This seems like the most obvious function this thing should perform, but until Drunknsloth mentioned it above it never occurred to me! I had a separate screen for each function. Duh. So you'll still be able to view only one at a time, but the default will be the "multi" view.

 

I'd do it with a 3 or 4 line Amber LCD and try to make it look OEM...

 

OP, we need to chat. I own a company that designs and builds arduino-based bomb props for paintball/airsoft/lasertag etc. I took the arduino architecture and created my own boards, now loaded with 12v/5A input for power so I can run them with those 12v power wheels batteries and power air horns and large sirens. The boards include the chipset, leads out to the keypad and LCD or OLED screens (I prefer green on black because it has a bad-ass military look), leads out to sirens and blinking lights, and input for either a low amperage 9v battery pack OR that 12v 5A input. Dimmer pots are also mounted on the backside of the board. The total board is the same size as an arduino UNO but is much more robust with more features for higher power handling.

I'm good at the manufacturing part. I get my control panels manufactured in Phoenix near where I live, and I have my boards made out of Colorado. I use 4 line screens right now, but changing to a 2 line screen is as simple as some code changes, obviously. My boards have 4 strong mounting holes (one on each corner) to put them wherever needed. However, I'm not as strong in the coding department except for what I've learned in the last 3 years.

Here's our newest project, near completion for production. Just tweaking some logo etching on the faceplate and some final details.

http://www.precisionmayhem.com/executive.php