Digital Dashboard Installed!

It’s not super pretty, but it works!image1 (3)

Over the past few months I installed the following sensors:

  • Water Temp (AEM 30-2012) installed where the throttle body heater coolant bung used to be in the head. It threads right in with an adapter i got from TRM.
  • Oil Temp (AEM 30-2012) installed into Bimmerworld oil distribution block mounted to oil filter housing
  • Oil Pressure (AEM 30-2131) also installed into the Bimmerworld ODB.
  • Throttle Position I get by tapping into the factory sensor at the throttle body. It is a 0-5V signal.

I loomed up the wiring and ran it through the firewall behind the glove box nice and neat. Everything still looks neat and clean in the engine bay. Once through the firewall, I crimped Molex MicroFit contacts on the wires and inserted them into the connector which mates to the “Main Unit”.

The Main Unit is installed in the glove box. For the moment its just the raw PCBs mounted on stand offs screwed to the bottom of the glove box. I need to work on an enclosure for this, but for now at least its secure and neat. (I’ll add a pic of this soon).

I then made another harness with the MiniFit connector and ran it behind the dashboard to connect between the Display and the Main Unit. the Display is secured via its bottom stand-offs with velcro. Again, not pretty, but its secure enough for the time being.

Functionally, everything is working great. I’m happy with the legibility of the display. The shift light is awesome. All sensors are behaving. It’s logging data well. It’s really pretty cool!

My intention is that over the next few weeks, I’ll write posts detailing each subsystem of the device including the sensor, circuit, and software, etc. Here’s the first one:

Digital Dashboard Dissection: Temperature Sensors

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