Original Source:
Jalopnik.com
It's no secret that shifting your own gears improves your
quality of life, because of science or something.
A young engineer at Ford has
come up with a very clever hack of an Xbox controller and Ford's open source
software to make a shift knob that helps you learn how to drive stick. It’s
also a peek into the future of car mods.
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Microsoft® Xbox 360™ Controller
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What the engineer, Zac Nelson, has done is to essentially
create a smart shift knob. What does it do, exactly? It tells you when to shift
gears by vibrating. But there's so much more to it than that! So much more!
The knob, which is a custom, 3D-printed piece, talks to the
car’s computer via OpenXC, the open-source application programming interface
(API) Ford developed and proposed as an open standard for car communication.
The knob uses an Arduino microcontroller to handle the data
from the car (engine RPM, throttle position) and control the vibration motor
from the XBox controller, and a 7-segment LED to visually show the gear
position. There's also a full-RGB-color LED in there just for giggles, it
seems.
An Android tablet is used to configure the shift knob for
both the particular car’s characteristics, or the goals of the shifting, say
speed or economy. The tablet is plugged into the knob via a miniUSB port, and
parameters of when the vibration happens can be set, so you can have it hold to
redline for maximum acceleration, or set a much lower number for better fuel
economy.
The knob has been in cars ranging from a Focus to a Shelby
GT500.
While this is a very clever little car hack just on its own,
it’s an even better basic tutorial of what is becoming possible for car hackers
and modifiers with a few fundamental tools. One of the most interesting things
about the hack is the OpenXC standard. It’s still relatively new and not yet
close to becoming an open standard across manufacturers, but it’s a good start.
At the moment it provides read-only information, but the set
of data it can provide is quite useful for many things. Here’s the list of
supported data streams, as of January 2012:
- AcceleratorPedalPosition
- BrakePedalStatus
- EngineSpeed
- FineOdometer - a persistent odometer recording)
- FuelConsumed - fuel consumed since the vehicle was started)
- FuelLevel - current level of fuel in the gas tank.
- HeadlampStatus - are headlamps are off or on.
- HighBeamStatus
- IgnitionStatus
- Latitude
- Longitude
- Odometer
- ParkingBrakeStatus - is the parking brake is engaged or not.
- SteeringWheelAngle
- TorqueAtTransmission - the actual current torque in the
transmission.
- TransmissionGearPosition - the actual current gear of the
transmission.
- TurnSignalStatus
- VehicleButtonEvent A ButtonEvent represents a button press,
release or hold on the vehicle HMI.
- VehicleDoorStatus - is a door ajar?
- VehicleSpeed - the current forward speed of the vehicle.
- WindshieldWiperStatus
That’s all extremely handy data for a driver, and is plenty
to make, say, an entirely custom instrument cluster, if you wanted. Want to
replace your warning lights with a row of tiny mechanical semaphore flags? You
could do it with the data given here. Want to make your car honk when a certain
latitude and longitude are reached? It’s doable.
This shift knob project also is a great example of how
useful common programmable microcontrollers like the Arduino are for car
hacking. Just downloading and reading the code (linked here) is a huge help for
learning how to read data from the car, and then act upon it.
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With the era of the manual transmission quickly dying, car enthusiasts and automakers
could welcome the younger generation re-interest in manual transmission driving. |
An Arduino has a number of pins that can be connected to
various other inputs or outputs. You can use it to read the data from the car,
evaluate it, and based on parameters you’ve programmed in, act upon it in many
ways.
Here, the Arduino is reading RPMs, and based on the number
set by the UI on the tablet, triggers the XBox vibration motor accordingly.
That’s at its most basic, and setting the LED numerical display is gravy.
This project could be simplified a bit by eliminating the
display and fancy custom 3D printed shift knob, and hard-coding in the shift
points to the Arduino (you could always connect the Arduino to your laptop to
change them) if you knew how to drive stick, but wanted a way to make sure you
always hit the right RPM shift points when you track your car or something. You
could modify an existing shift knob for the housing, and while it wouldn’t look
as cool as the 3D printed one, it’d work.
This little project is a great tutorial for anyone looking
to get started in modern car hacking. This is how hot-rodding in the future
will be happening, and it’s worth getting familiar with the tools if you’re not
already.
Hopefully, these open standards to get data into and out of
your car will soon become industry-wide open standards. There’s lots of
potential fun to be had.
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