The Dashboard Continues

Rev 2 of the Dashboard

After a lot of cutting, sanding and re-doing, the dash is in but not covered.  Next step is to find some appropriate material to cover the rails and dash.  Next step is to create the center binnacle frame but that may mean pulling the binnacle forward to make is in-plane with the rest of the dash.

The before condition

Driver side

Passenger side with new glove box door

The new speakers  make a world of difference.  The glove box is not built yet, just the door is in place with the magnetic catch.  Having the stereo by the driver is also much easier than the old position in front of the passenger.  The Arduino is mounted in a portrait orientation since this was the only way it would fit with the defroster vent running right behind the dash.    The stereo barely clears the same duct.  There is still the question about adding the red and green status lights to help grab the driver's attention.

Minor Arduino enhancements this weekend:

1. Limit the screen update frequency to no faster than once every 3/4 of a second.  These seems more than fast enough and provides sufficient time to perform all of the queries to the controller between updates.
2. The system now reads the status of the accelerator switch to determine if the system is in regen mode.  If there is controller current and PWM values and the accelerator switch is off, then it must be in Regen.  With this information, the power reading on the display turns "Green" to indicate regen.  It is White normally, Yellow above 12,000W and Red above 18,000 watts.
3. Added a rolling column graph to show power over time. This is not terribly useful but it does provide a quick glimpse to see how much power was used for a recent hill climb or acceleration.  It shows about 20 bars each representing 3/4 of second.  With the limit screen real estate available for this, it is not very high resolution but the bars change color in a similar manner to the power indicator in #2 above, to speed interpretation.  The whole graph is about 200x50 pixels.

Testing

Completed another extended drive today, 15 miles with hills and one 45 mph stretch.  Everything worked well, no real issues.  The motor heated up to around 100C during heavy loads but cooled off to 80C as soon as the load was reduced or the car was stopped at a red-light.  With the ChargePoint charger at work now, it be easier to assess actual energy efficiency since the charger will report total KWH provided during a charging session.  

Here is a ChargePoint screen shot from a quick charge last week.  This is reporting about 1.1 KWH, which is a 25% of the 4 KWH usable battery capacity. Took about 40 minutes.  This also included the recharging of the 12V accessory battery which has 100W charger.  Their Android app is also very handy since it reports real time charge status like time and power.  Makes it easy to know when the charge is complete.

ChargePoint Data Reporting - Shows actual KWH used to recharge