Ethanol Content Sensor Read Out?

I dont even know if this is possible or not, but it would be cool if it is. I am doing an e85 conversion, and I'm wiring up my own Arduino to read out the ethanol content from the sensor via blue tooth. I was also wanting to wire up a small lcd screen to read out in the car but I don't know anywhere to mount it where it will look good. But I had an idea and I'm wondering if anyone knows if its possible or how to do it.

 

My idea is that I'm wondering if I can change one of the parameters in the clock under the cubby to read out ethanol content. I have a spare clock circuit board I can play around with, but I don't know if there would be any way to connect the two. If anyone has any ideas let me know, thanks.

Here's some pics of the circuit board if anyone knows what all of this means

 

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Perfect timing - I’m looking to do something similar but with the “% lock” 0-5V output of my DCCD controller. I was thinking that if I can’t fit a little .96” OLED alongside the clock, I could replace the clock entirely and just duplicate the clock and E/T feature on the new display. I can live without the outdoor temp, and the mpg is useless due to larger injectors.

 

It would be slick if we could make a custom board that fits in the original spot, and found a screen that’s close in size. Can you measure that? I was going to shop for some components today.

Subbed.

I feel like this is an area of life I should have really focused on. The stuff people pull off with arduino and raspberry is incredible. Sadly I get confused by the simplest things with computers

Btw - what year is that clock from? If I remember right, there are variations from year to year.

So my car is a 2005 but the clock may be from a 2006 I can't remember. Did you want the dimensions of the screen or the whole unit?

 

On another note, if you have romraider you can apply a patch to your ecu that allows you to change the multiplier for the mpg calculator so that your mpg is correct with bigger injectors. If you need more info on this just lmk

 

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The screen size is what I’m most interested in, since the exact board dimensions won’t be needed until after prototyping (for me, anyways). I noticed the LED at the bottom left of the display, which I don’t recognize from my 06, though I’m not sure.

 

I would have applied the mpg correction factor if I was still on an OS tune, however I’m on a locked Cobb pro-tune so I’ll keep it in my back pocket until I need a revision. All that said it would be great if we could decode the incoming data stream and duplicate all the outputs on an OLED, but that’s over my skill level.

So the lcd screen is 100mm x 20mm

As seen by the photos there are two groups of three prongs on the top of the screen

On the bottom there ar the same two groups of three prongs plus two groups of 13 prongs.

 

And the little light is to light up the buttons for the brightness and display on the left of the screen

 

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There are 6 wires going into it so I imagine that the circuit board is its own computer and just needs a power and ground, but one of those wires has to be a signal wire to take the information about mpg from the ecu, all the other stuff it displays can be self contained except for maybe the temperature

 

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So I did a little more digging. Im trying to find a manuel for the screen, im probably looking in the wrong spot for how to do this because in all reality it will probably need a new screen.

 

Regardless the stock display is not an lcd screen it is a vfd (vacuum fluorescent display). On the back of the vfd it says Futaba which is the brand, and 7-MT-260GIN and below that it says 8D12.

 

I've tried finding information on this screen and I can't seem to find anything.

 

Im thinking to do what I want with it I would need to find an lcd screen and wire it into an arduino to perform the functions needed. But if possible I would like to find out were to connect signal from the arduino to the oem display so that it can incorporate the ethanol content into it.

 

If anyone knows of any forums that specializes in this sort of thing lmk and ill post this topic on there as well

 

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I ordered an arduino uno and OLED display to play with. Whatever I end up with will hopefully fit directly and maybe even take advantage of the existing buttons. I’m not planning on adding Bluetooth since my DCCD controller lives in the storage cubby in the glovebox and has a dedicated 0-5V output for the signal I’m watching. However there are arduinos with BT on the board, and there are also add-on modules you can use. Maybe we can make a display board that works for both of us, with unique code to drive it?

You guys better post pictures!

We installed a dash commander on the c6 zr1 vette that allows you to customize the data display and you could get info like ethanol content and several other pids that weren’t included from the factory. My favorite one was the knock detection. If the knock sensors were retarding timing the display would read “KNOCK!!”

You guys better post pictures!

I got a YouTube channel, so I'll be filming everything too. I got an arduino and some other bits coming in the mail as well

 

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I posted a question on the arduino forums to see if they can help. It looks like the information going to the display comes through the green wire from the "Body Integrated Unit". Witch is a secondary computer that controls all electrical stuff not related to engine operations.

 

I'm wondering if it would be possible to splice an arduino in that wire to take the signal coming from the BIU and add into it the code for ethanol content so once it reaches the display it thinks ethanol content came from the computer as well

 

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So the arduino forum says it won't be possible to integrate the sensor into the factory cluster. So my plan now is to put a lcd screen where my ash tray is and modify the door for a bezel then I will relay the ethanol content as well as fuel pressure from my fuel pressure sensor. I think those two would be pretty useful info to have on one display

 

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Sounds like a great workaround. There is a "clock relocation bezel" that moves the clock to the ash tray cubby, which might be a good piece to start with?

 

I just got my Arduino yesterday. I bought the sensor kit bundle which comes with a small OLED and a bunch of sensors. It was less than $40 with the Uno R3 combined.

interesting!

 

I planned on getting the cobb flex fuel kit this upcoming summer, because it just seems awesome to fill your tank with whatever and let the tune figure it out, and I finally broke down and bought an accessport so why not. I never even thought about having a readout. I always assumed the accessport could do it. Or am I interpreting this incorrectly, and you are going full e85 and you want to know how much ethanol is actually in the fuel??

This is going to be a fun project. Running the "DCCD lock" output off the potentiometer just to get a hang for what the code looks like. I'm pulling the temp and humidity from a DHT11 sensor that came with the sensor kit.

 

Seems like a 3.9" (480x128p) TFT LCD will fit nicely in the stock clock location and will allow for a full color display, unlike this little monochrome OLED. Something like these.

interesting!

 

I planned on getting the cobb flex fuel kit this upcoming summer, because it just seems awesome to fill your tank with whatever and let the tune figure it out, and I finally broke down and bought an accessport so why not. I never even thought about having a readout. I always assumed the accessport could do it. Or am I interpreting this incorrectly, and you are going full e85 and you want to know how much ethanol is actually in the fuel??

I'm not sure if the accessport displays that or not. An yes I'm going to be running e70 blend so I want the display so I can keep an eye on things.

 

The reason I went this route is because I can do all if my tuning stuff through open-source so there has been no need for an accessport and there flex fuel kit is also very expensive

 

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I would have liked to stay opensource as well, but it was hard to tune my stage 3 cams with opensource, as soon as I went to accessport it worked like a charm. It does multiple parameters for ethanol, so you can show it on the accessport like in the picture.

Can opensource tune for different ethanol content, did they add flexfuel? I like the ability to put in whatever gas and it adjusts itself on the fly.

 

@Underdog

Do you use opensource or AP?

I've used both in the past, but currently on AP. Unfortunately no E85 anywhere near me or I would have gone the flex fuel route years ago.

whoa wait a minute? what do you have going on with your 5mt? a dccd controller? we can do that? I think read briefly in another thread about somebody trying to rwd, but it didn't really register until now.