Instrumentation
From Trevipedia
The electrical system of the car is organised as a number of subsystems. To simplify the wiring, a (0, 12 V) power bus is used to supply power to each of the subsystems, and a CAN serial communications bus is used to send control messages and data between subsystems.
The subsystems include:
- battery
- motor control
- front lighting
- rear lighting
- dash
- driver controls
Dash
The UniSA prototype used a telematics computer dontated by Freescale to provide dash functions. The computer ran embedded Linux.
The colour screen provided information including:
- telltales: left indicator, high beam, battery low, handbrake, right indicator
- warning messages: low cell voltage, high cell voltage, battery temperature, motor temperature
- speed
- odometer
- battery measurements: power, current, discharge, temperature low cell voltage, high cell voltage.
Buttons surrounding the screen were used to control the lights.
A key advantage of using a computer is that it is easy to customise the display and to interface to other subsystems—battery, motor controller, lighting controllers and external switches.
The following image is a screen-capture from prototype dash software, written in Java:
The next image shows telltales along the top, and warnings along the bottom:
Indicators and horn
The UniSA prototype used momentary-on push buttons on the steering wheel to control indicators and horn. This was easier to implement than a conventional indicator stalk, and user testing showed that it was easy to use. However, it did not provide self-cancelling indicators.
