TS Dash

Raymond_B

Raymond_B

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I Support the NLOC
OK, this is cool!

But 1st **DISCLAIMER** :) There's a lot of computer related steps at the moment so it's far, far from plug and play. I imagine that will change greatly as this evolves.

Anyway what is TS Dash? Well it's a new product from EFI Analytics (Tuner Studio and Megalog Viewer) folks that solves the multi-device connectivity to Megasquirt. Lot's of people offer DIY based dashes, but also want to still tune from their laptop or tablet without TS Dash you can only have one device connected to the Megasquirt at a time. With TS Dash you can have 3 AND, probably most importantly, you can connect wirelessly. http://www.tunerstudio.com/index.php/products/ts-dash

TS Dash can be installed on a lot of different OS types, but I chose to use a little Raspberry Pi I had laying around from previous dash testing. What's nice about the RBPI is EFI Analytics created a disk image you can download that's specifically for the RBPI. So pop the image on a micro SD card and boot the little sucker up and it goes right to TS Dash and makes itself a wireless access point then you simply connect the RBPI to your Megasquirt via USB. Then I installed the latest Tuner Studio beta and after that I joined my laptop to the new "TS Dash" wireless network shown opened Tuner Studio and connected to TS Dash. From there I had wireless access to use Tuner Studio, watch the dash, edit the tune, etc. Pretty darn cool!

I'll post more about this as I use it more. One thing I want to do is set the Raspberry Pi to turn on and off with the truck, that is easy, but I'll need a little battery powered device (like a UPS) to keep it powered long enough after the vehicle key is off to save everything and power down. There's a lot of different ways to do that, I just need to have a think to make it robust and small.

Raspberry Pi 4 in a little 3D printed case I made.

20230429_211018575_iOS.jpg

Laptop sitting on my messy toolbox, obviously truck was not running, just keyed on.

20230429_211003104_iOS.jpg
 
Are you aware that the RBPI was designed to be left on for extended periods of time with very low consumption? I hate the boot times of the RBPI, 16-18 seconds then TS has to boot. Then its usually another 13-15 seconds for TS to boot. I am not going to bother having mine power down, rather I’m programming it to go in to sleep mode. While in sleep mode I will have it run off of a separate lithium battery. I
 
Hey Ray, do you think this would run on a PI Zero? It’s much more power efficient and could just be left on with a backup battery for it to run on.
 
The RBPI image that EFI Analytics built is very fast, I have not timed it from key on to a working screen, but you might do so. Hibernating and then waking up the RBPI is certainly an option however you'll need the hardware that will switch from battery to vehicle power and vise-versa along with appropriate scripting. I do not know much about the PI Zero, what are the specs?
 
Raymond_B said:
The RBPI image that EFI Analytics built is very fast, I have not timed it from key on to a working screen, but you might do so. Hibernating and then waking up the RBPI is certainly an option however you'll need the hardware that will switch from battery to vehicle power and vise-versa along with appropriate scripting. I do not know much about the PI Zero, what are the specs?
Click to expand...
You can’t hibernate a RBPI, that’s my issue. RBPI take 15-18 seconds to boot then it’s another 15 seconds for software to load. That’s 30 seconds. I know it’s sounds petty but mine will be closer to a daily then a drag or show truck. I don’t want to wait 30 seconds for my dash to come on before I can start the engine. PI Zeroes are not that expensive, I will just buy one any try it and report back.
 
Pretty sure I just got my answer in this article. Requirements on TS site state RBPI 3+ / 4. The RBPI Zero 2 W has the same processing power on a significantly smaller power draw. I dug into the TS Dash info a bit and found that you can adjust the shut down time. I will just kick mine out to 2-3 hours and that should cover most daily driving events. Waiting on boot up time for the jfirst start of the day is a far lesser issue. Here is some info on the PI Zero 2 W
hackaday.com

The Pi Zero 2 W Is The Most Efficient Pi

Last week we saw the announcement of the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which is basically an improved quad-core version of the Pi Zero — more comparable in speed to the Pi 3B+, but in the smalle…
hackaday.com hackaday.com
 
I was going to say, have you tried the EFI analytics image and tested it’s boot times it’s supposed to be really fast
 
Going to finally tackle this project this weekend. If I can get it to boot in a reasonable time on the PI Zero then I would be comfortable making a dash that is plug and play if guys would be interested. This would be on a 14” display.
 
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