Hi, guys.
I'm building a TR4 as a fun weekend car. After considering several drivetrain swap options, I've decided to just rebuild the stock engine, trans, and diff. Will be running twin Weber DCOE carbs and Pertronix ignition.
Is there any way I can run a modern "digital dash" based on an Android tablet (or something) on an old car like this? OBD-II wasn't even a glint in his father's eye when this thing was built.
Pic for inspiration...
An Android tablet would need something external to gather data and report back to it. There are a number of digital race dashes intended to gather data from sensors directly - AEM, AiM Sports, Racepak, and Race Technologies are some of the more common ones.
As mentioned above you need to have sensors that output a signal for a digital dash to display. Even then, most sending units are just variable resistors so you'd need a pull-up circuit to change the output to 0-1V or 0-5V that most displays are looking for. RacePak has their VNet system that essentially lets you daisy-chain various sensors into their displays, which is probably the easiest option short of going with a complete aftermarket ECU and CAN-BUS system.
I'd start by listing what you want to monitor and how. Different types of monitors work better with different types of display, and digital isn't always the best choice.
Digital works well with something where you need accuracy but it has a fairly low rate of change. Speedometers on a street car, for example. But it doesn't work well on a scan, so if it's something that you mostly just need for troubleshooting a problem, it should be paired with a warning light. Maybe coolant temp would work well like this?
Analog gauges work better on a scan because they make it easier to see trends. They also work better on gauges that change rapidly, like a tach.
A race dash is a good choice if you need to organize a whole whack of information so you can pull it up when you need it. It also gives you a nice, easy to install and program set of warning lights. But on a car like this, I'd be temped just to install a few warning lights and keep the analog gauges.
The cheapest off the shelf stuff is from AutoSport Labs, you can get one of their race capture devices and go from there.
I built my own with an Odroid C2, but I'm an embedded software/hardware guy but not everyone is.
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