Many years ago I was a professional electronics designer creating embedded systems for music, add ons for home computers and other good stuff. I recently bought an Arduino board to play with and intend to add computerised goodies to my car. A Land Rover Discovery 300 TDI.
A recent modification to the car was to remove the cooling fan which is belt driven and add a second hand electric fan which relieves about 8% of the engine load making the car more efficient. An important aspect of engine efficiency is good temperature control especially when towing a load, which I often do, I want to make a temperature monitor with an arduino I also regularly drive the 200+ miles from Paris to my real home in Brittany so I would love a cruise control for it which, I believe can be done with the Arduino as the brains.
I need a throttle position sensor to detect actual power settings and so the cruise control can detect if I want control back. I also want a brake sensor, tied to the brake light switch to immediately turn off the control if I brake. I need an engine speed detector connected to the tachometer or crank sensor in case I put the clutch in while the cruise control is on.
Next I need a stepper motor drive to work the throttle with a fail-safe mechanism that will release throttle control if the computer dies and which will not effect normal throttle operation. Then finally I want the whole kit and caboodle to provide a web service so I can connect it to a touch screen computer running Windows 7 and generating WPF graphics for user feedback and control
Effectively, in my spirit of "it's just a computer, integrate it!" I expect this to be a really interesting project.
A recent modification to the car was to remove the cooling fan which is belt driven and add a second hand electric fan which relieves about 8% of the engine load making the car more efficient. An important aspect of engine efficiency is good temperature control especially when towing a load, which I often do, I want to make a temperature monitor with an arduino I also regularly drive the 200+ miles from Paris to my real home in Brittany so I would love a cruise control for it which, I believe can be done with the Arduino as the brains.
I need a throttle position sensor to detect actual power settings and so the cruise control can detect if I want control back. I also want a brake sensor, tied to the brake light switch to immediately turn off the control if I brake. I need an engine speed detector connected to the tachometer or crank sensor in case I put the clutch in while the cruise control is on.
Next I need a stepper motor drive to work the throttle with a fail-safe mechanism that will release throttle control if the computer dies and which will not effect normal throttle operation. Then finally I want the whole kit and caboodle to provide a web service so I can connect it to a touch screen computer running Windows 7 and generating WPF graphics for user feedback and control
Effectively, in my spirit of "it's just a computer, integrate it!" I expect this to be a really interesting project.
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