Delorean Console Clock – Part 1

Intro and Why

The Delorean Motor Company's first and only automobile was the 1981-1983 DMC-12. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Lorean_DMC-12 for more info). It was originally intended to become an 'affordable' super-car however design compromises, unrealistic production objectives, and unfortunate changes in the money market led to a car that was twice as expensive and far less capable than origionally promised. Out of necessity it was re-marketed as a 'gentlemans' touring car. For all of the Delorean's short comings, it is in fact an excellent touring vehicle that combines innovative style and function with economy and relative reliability.

While not traditionally considered a requirement of a GT vehicle, it is becoming prevalent for these cars to have more amenities-via-gadgets than their strictly-performance-oriented brethren. With this in mind I have been thinking lately of ways to integrate a trip computer without violating the integrity of the interior (the Delorean may have been rushed to market, but Lotus/DMC did a great job on the interior). Early Delorean’s were equipped with console clocks in the center console (in the shift gate/plate). This seemed to be a good place to locate a small trip computer.

Initial proof-of-concept
My first step was to locate a console plate that had the opening for the clock (my Delorean does not have this opening). I was able to purchase a rather rough plate from EBay. It was in good enough shape to make a fairly high quality mold (may be the subject of a later post). While I was working on the mold I proceeded to build a rough prototype of the actual clock itself..

I have several spare displays from previous projects, and a couple of them seemed to be appropriate for use here. I ended up using a small 84x48 pixel LCD display which uses the venerable PCD8544 controller (used on the Nokia 3310 Cell Phone). This display is likely a bit too small and to be honest I would prefer to use a VFD display for obvious contrast/visibility concerns. One of the objectives of this proof-of-concept is to see if a LCD with EL/LED backlight can ‘cut-it’.

I ended up using green LEDs for the backlight, as I was concerned that the blue EL foil wouldn't fit in a car that was designed and built years before blue LEDs were invented.

I used small perforated circuit boards in a stacked configuration (see photo) and divided the device into;
Layer 1: ‘Display/Input board’
Layer 2: ‘Processor, real-time clock, memory and power board’
Layer 3: ‘in-vehicle sensor interface, built-in sensors and optional I2C components’

Initial Functional Requirements
Trip computers are fairly well-understood. However for the sake of keeping this project ‘low-time-impact’ as is possible, I want to find the minimum set of functions that are interesting and potentially useful enough to spend the time to integrate into the final device. This is the first list I came up with;

Function1: Time (big characters for time, little characters indicating current date)
Function2: Interior (Ambient) Air Temperature (Digital readout and analog diagram)
Function3: Outside Air Temperature (Digital readout and analog diagram)
Function4: Compass ( magnetic field sensor, large character with N,NE, NW, S, SW, etc. and small characters indicating actual heading)
Function5: Cumulative MPG (real-time/instant MPG would be difficult to accomplish without knowing what the k-jet system is up to, any ideas?).

Current Status
The initial proof-of-concept has a implementation of function 1, 2 and 4. Note: While taking the photographs included here, the display shown is half way between rendering the ‘time’ function and the ‘compass’ function. it is now working proper with the three functions.

Future Actions
[1] Complete current proof-of-concept prototype

[2] Evaluate and adjust design
[3] Create ‘installable’ prototype (likely as far as I’ll take this)
[4] Post design details & results.

If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to post comments or send me a note.