We have been having our driveway replaced over the last two weeks and the guys stored some of their gear in the garage in front of the Vogue so it was difficult to get access. I took the opportunity to get some work done on the software for the Speedo cluster. After an embarrasingly long time I finally got the 16x2 white on blue display working (The SPI bus for the big display shares some of the 8 bit data lines to the 16x2 displays - I didn't realise for a long time that I had to suspend SPI when writing to the parallel port D on the PIC).
This picture is of the almost-first thing I displayed. (The display on the left is the new one.)
This is the most likely contender for the battery State Of Charge indication (display on left). The number increases as I use power from the pack and should not be able to go above 20.00 (since it's a 20AH pack). The bar graph shows one block for each AH remaining in the pack. It starts at 16 and when it is empty it means I have used 80% of the pack capacity (4 AH remaining). I may place a message on the display when the bar graph is at zero. Something like " CHARGE NOW! ".
I can now wire the other 16x2 display and mount them both then finish and seal the speedo housing. I can update the software later with a USB port (and USB to serial) on my laptop.
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