kishg wrote:
Probably so.
But I’ve learned an ass-load about what to monitor, why to monitor, and how to monitor. Lessons learned always have a cost. Also, the charms of an integrated dash are not at all obvious to a newby.
There’s some disads of an integrated dash too. I like analog dials, for quick reading, but sometimes I want to know 213deg from 215deg because I did something different and I’m trying to understand what impact that change might have had. For a while I had both analog and digital dials. Also, a dash/logger attempts to condense a lot of info into a small place and that isn’t always ideal.
There’s the issue of flexibility too. For a while I had several analog and digital gauges wired to switches so I could switch the gauge to a different sensor. When you’re curious about what’s going on and your trying to confirm hunches or other folks opinions, your gauge system needs to have a lot of flexibility.
Sure, you can program some interesting features of the current digital dashes, but in the end, it’s only going to present the data it’s way.
The idea solution would be a faily large digital dash with a high resolution display, not primitive 20yr old LCD/backlight technology. Then you could design whatever visual features you wanted, and put them wherever you wanted on the display. Put 2 OT gauges on the right, just above your OP gauge. Make the gauges have analog needles with a digital center. Put coolant temp gauges on the right. Make the entire gauge turn yellow at an alert threshold and flash red at an alarm threshold. Make your speedo a black bar graph that surrounds your analog tach display. All of the display unit realestate should be entirely configurable. Then have soft keys around the perimeter to execute your pre-programmed instructions.
Now that would be cool.