Interface with in-car lcd display

Hi,

From the tone of your question, it seems you have little experience in electronics and engineering.

From the complexity of your question, I suggest you 'cant get there from here'.

I have about 40 years in electronics and would hesitate to try this myself.

I have 43 years, after BSEE, experience in automotive electronics ;-)

I've yet to run across a vehicle that didn't have a COMPLETE wiring harness, such that any FACTORY accessory couldn't simply be plugged in.

Just take a look under your dash sometime and count the unused connectors tucked in there.

...Jim Thompson

Have you surfed for a factory-level manual with wiring diagram? MANY years ago, as in 1963, I managed to get a complete manual on my 1961 Renault Dauphine, from a bookseller in London.

I then proceeded to install a Ford 60A alternator in place of the generator ;-) (I was designing alternator regulators back in those days.)

...Jim Thompson

That could well be. On this side of the pond I think the ECU, for a given engine, has all the features. Since service is done by simply plugging into a connector to read out all the data.

I've not seen a recent vintage Peugeot around here (Arizona)... do they still sell them in the States? (But I've seen some "golden oldies", like the one Columbo drives on his TV show, a dilapidated

But, going back to the display, if you can sort out how to talk to it, I'm sure you could create your own sensors and interfaces (with some help from tutors... heaven help you if they're typical academics :)

...Jim Thompson

I'm looking to upgrade my current in car display (which is just a basic clock), to a multi-line lcd display that comes with higher-spec models. As far as I understand it, in order to interface with the engine management unit to provide details of temperature, mileage, faults, the entire engine wiring loom would need to be replace which is way too much work. So I was thinking that maybe I could just source a genuine replacement lcd display part (very cheap off ebay), and somehow drive it to display just the time plus maybe a few other bits of static info (ie. not requiring any external data from the car's sensors) to spice things up a bit.

Would anyone have any ideas as to how I could go about doing this? Please ask away with any additional information that you would require and I'll try my best to respond. I may possibly be looking to pay someone to design the driver unit for this as I know of many people in my online vehicle community for this particular model that would pay good money to have this sort of aftermarket upgrade to their vehicles.

Please respond on here or reply to my email address omitting the spamtrap.

Hmm, well this is the kind of display I was originally after:

So something similar to this (to stick with the current look of the car interior), would be best - unfortunately I can't find anything close on that site!

You're going to need to be creative. Search around - google, car newsgroups and eb sites, even print catalogs. Find the best fit, or the closest thing you can find and MAKE it work. I've done a lot of work on hot rods and custom cars. Once you go beyond what the factory offers, you're generally on your own. If you're just starting out, this can be frustrating, and you *will* make mistakes! Two inportant things to remember are: limit the damage mistakes make, and learn from the ones you do make.

I have done, and didn't actually find any prominent wires that looked like what I was after (that's not to say it's not buried deeper in the dash).

Unfortunately being a French car it does actually lack a complete wiring harness - as I found when trying to install an aftermarket fog lamp kit which comes as an optional extra for the car. I was intially told the wiring would just be dangling loose and that it was a plug and play affair, unfortunately it required the fitting of the wiring from scratch.

I'm not entirely sure what 'tone' you're inferring, but I'm currently in my second year at degree level doing an electronic and electrical engineering degree :-)

Though as I'm currently on vacation I can't really get in touch with my tutors to ask them this question.

Meaning?

From what I understand, albeit on a basic level as we haven't covered this sort of stuff in any of my degree modules, a dot matrix display requires a microprocessor to drive it and perhaps an eeprom to store the information required for display. What exactly am I missing here that would impede giving this a try?

Jim, from what I understand it's not only a question of missing wiring (going from what a few people in the Peugeot community have told me), but also the fact that the engine ECU lacks the features to provide the info to pass on to such a display. Would I be correct in saying that ECU's differ from engine to engine, that not all features are supported (and some disabled), and I would require a completely new engine if I wanted to upgrade the ECU?

Of course not.