Race car gauge hell: solved
This is a project I've wanted to do for a while, not only from a creative perspective, but also from a technical perspective. In a very short time, I was able to design and build a proof of concept application that utilized the OBD2 spec CAN Bus communication protocol used in every modern vehicle.
Mission
The mission statement for this project was simplicity, and virtually no cognitive load, unless of course it was absolutely necessary. Through the creative process I landed on a monochromatic interface that used color only to communicate and command attention. A monochromatic layout allows the driver of the vehicle to observe only at a fraction of a second without actually needing to focus the status of the vehicle. If something is red, they know to pay attention as that metric has surpassed the high limit they configured for their vehicle. If something is blue they know that a sensor is reading colder than the optimal range. All of the interface can be read from an individuals periphery, enabling full attention to the road.
Most aftermarket gauges, and monitoring solutions are haphazardly fit in the vehicles cabin, forcing the driver to look in multiple places just to see if their vehicle is about to explode from all the hooning underway.
Typical aftermarket gauge mounting in performance vehicles demand high cognitive load.
Solution
Using the display on our test vehicle I retrofit a Windows based micro PC to one of its inputs and began designing an MVP.
Design
Dashboard
Those fancy lights above the dashboard, they aren't just an RPM shift light...
Configuration Settings
All together now...
Below is a quick video I put together demonstrating the core concepts and also showing the POC in the wild.
But wait there's more
I wrote a Medium article about this project. Its not very often I work on things I can write about or even share to the public so this was a nice change of pace for me.
https://medium.com/clarity-consulting/solved-race-car-dashboard-gauge-hell-13e5f81e5405#.kxi84unpq