Have Porsche 997 Gauges wired with Arduino controller - HELP

So I have this cluster I bought on ebay.



and a friend of mine has yanked it all apart and made it controllable with an Arduino board and he can send commands manually via a serial monitor to make everything move and light up.. BUT..

Getting this cluster to work with rF1 and rF2 is the ultimate goal and frankly X-Sim is really not that user friendly. He and I have been over the forums ten times and we can't figure out A) how to pull the data out of rFactor and B) getting the date into the standard serial format for the arduino.

So any help? I would love this setup finally working!

Hi ZeosPantera
That's gonna look great with all the needles moving!
To make them move, you either let us know, what data you’d need and we can provide this via the SimTools plugin or you have a look at the rFactor Mod/Dev Corner under rFactor internals plugin and extract the data you want.

I will talk with my guy (Ironically named ITman) and get a list of what we need going.

Thanks for the response btw. I thought we would never find any help!

EDIT.. Here is the photo I sent to ITman when we were brainstorming what data to use for the lights.



I know some aren't do-able but most are. The actual needles would use their actual values (Speed, RPM, Water Temp, Oil Temp, Fuel) The only analog gauge that is up in the air is oil pressure which isn't in rFactor so that may change up to a gear indicator 1-5.

Hello !

First : get the data out of the Game
- with a plugin available for sending telemetry (rFactor) you have to code in VC++
- or using a dedicated software (Xsim, Simtools beta, ...)

Second : driving gauges
you can use an Arduino (for example) to receive the data via Com port and compute orders to motors

Third : motorize your gauges
- you may use the gauge and try to emulate their own data stream (CAN, ODB2 ?...) if you have the specs
or
- you may remove their electronics/motors and plug your motor behind
a stepper motor
a DC motor with a potentiometer (just like our wiper motors ! for 2DOF simulators)

yours
Mat

It was actually more like $60.. But it was in the wrong section and nobody but me bid on them. I guess used porsche gauges aren't a hot item. So I got REAL lucky. There are a few of them on their for $600-2000 depending on how rip-offy they want to get.

Thank you for the access! I may send my cohort who is doing the arduino conversion and needs to do the real testing for them to you. I am not sure of his name on these forums.

And that cohort is me!

If anyone is curious, here is the schematic of the circuit to control the gauges.

Arrrgg!! I have been haunting Ebay for porsche gauges but as you mention the prices are a bit...ok...a lot higher than I think they should be. Good find and welcome to Xsimulator.net!

Check out the work that Yobuddy and Eaorobbie have been doing lately on dash plugins for Simtools.

http://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/dashboard-support.4727/#post-45124

Figure people would like to see progress.

They are amazing thanks for letting me be involved. Hope the app works well at the show.
Again an amazing achievement.