New touch screen project.

[audiofn]

Great news over the last week!  Looks like MTC Screens has a viable option to replace the delaminating screens for the 2011-2014 model year boats.  This is fantastic.  A few hours before this was announced I ordered up a set up from Wake Switches.  So what am I doing?  Probably something stupid, crazy, chasing a pipe dream?  I have been in the home automation business for about 30 years.  We design and develop automation systems for high end homes.  This includes custom screens and control of all kinds of devices.  I am not trying to replace the screen, that is now done thanks to MTC.  I am looking to take our "older" boats and maybe allow us to bring in some newer technologies.  By making my own interface I can have additional buttons on the screen for filling Fat Sacks, for running wake gates that never came on my boat.  Maybe even presets for wake gates and the ability to hit a button to get them to swap for when surfers want to change sides.  I am even trying to figure out a way to have real feedback of the level in the fat sacks and the angle of the wake gates.  All things you can have on new boats but not the older ones or when you add these things to newer boats.  I think all this could be really cool/fun.  I am starting with a Raspberry Pi computer.  This will tie into the wire harness similar to the Wake Switch idea using a relay board/boards  This will allow me to keep the dash very stock looking and not have to add a bunch of switches.  The plan is to start out slow with relays and grow the control from there.  The touch screen I am looking for will be 1000 NITS of brightness and 7".  The Raspberry Pi is a very small compact CPU that can easily be placed on the back of the panel or hidden in the dash.  No idea how fast I can get this done but it will be fun and I will keep this updated as I progress.   

For now I have purchased the Raspberry Pi computer/keyboard/mouse, GPIO relay board for development.  I also have ordered a USB relay board that I think will probably be what I will use as part of the final product.  The control of the relays should be fairly easy.  The hard part will be making a user interface that I really like.  The screen that I am looking at is  IP65 rated so should be at least at the same level as the original as far as water protection.  I can certainly spend some time if needed and get a higher rating, even IP67.  Looking forward to trying to pull this off and if there are any people that want to get involved and are good with UI development with things like photo shop and so on I would welcome your help.

[mxmark4]

You need to post this on wake garage. Lots of guys there do similar projects on older boats. There is a lot of good infovthere that might help you and guys are usually wolling to share their coding which might help you get a head start on setting up for all the systems you want to integrate. 

[amartin]

First, I know nothing about the technology behind this type of automation….but, can you make the interface a commercially available device?  Being able to control from you phone via Bluetooth takes some of the screen robustness concerns away…

[audiofn]

40 minutes ago, mxmark4 said:

You need to post this on wake garage. Lots of guys there do similar projects on older boats. There is a lot of good infovthere that might help you and guys are usually wolling to share their coding which might help you get a head start on setting up for all the systems you want to integrate. 

Thanks I will for sure post this there as well.  

[audiofn]

18 minutes ago, amartin said:

First, I know nothing about the technology behind this type of automation….but, can you make the interface a commercially available device?  Being able to control from you phone via Bluetooth takes some of the screen robustness concerns away…

Bluetooth is certainly something I could look into doing and may be fun to add.  I would want to get all the other stuff working first.  It will be quite a project tying to figure out things like the draw of my heater to make sure I have a large enough fuse and so on.  

[smileysteve]

Raspberry Pi, screen, USB relay board seem like an expensive way to prototype.

An Arduino with Bluetooth, control relays through the gpio, originally control with laptop until you add switches and have your program down, then add a smartphone control.

Boots faster, costs less, smaller,and you save a lot of money using a phone instead a screen you have to mount somewhere (and it's replaceable).

Look at the go surf assist control unit as an example

[audiofn]

22 hours ago, smileysteve said:

Raspberry Pi, screen, USB relay board seem like an expensive way to prototype.

An Arduino with Bluetooth, control relays through the gpio, originally control with laptop until you add switches and have your program down, then add a smartphone control.

Boots faster, costs less, smaller,and you save a lot of money using a phone instead a screen you have to mount somewhere (and it's replaceable).

Look at the go surf assist control unit as an example

The plan is to put this all in the location of the factory screen.  The cost is not bad.  Touch screen is around 500 bucks and that includes the PI.  The relays are around 35 bucks.  My test set up was under 150 bucks.  Arduino is fantastic and was my original direction but I am running into issues getting a good touch panel set up.  Arduino would be nice because I would not have worry about hard shutdowns.

Edited September 29, 2022 by audiofn

[audiofn]

The relays showed up this weekend.  Hope to have them working by the end of this week.

[audiofn]

Ok so far I have had issues getting the relay board to work that I purchased.  Then I found a hat that I can add to my computer that will give me NEMA integration.  Very cool.  I am shifting gears to try and see if I can make this work.  If so it will be amazig as it will simplify everything by quite a bit. 

 

[audiofn]

Update:  The parts arrived.  I built the computer, I got some tests working inside the software on the computer.  Next step is get tied into the boat.  I had to order a connector from Molex to adapt the NMEA cable to the plug that would normally go into the touch screen.  I was able to get the wire diagram for that plug so it should be easy to make the cable I hope.  

Edited December 6, 2022 by audiofn

[benkn]

Great, do you have some pictures of the board or software so far :)? Do you have a prototype of software/front end still ready?  I am just interested to see what's going on. I'm also looking forward to a nice replacement solution of the mtc touch when my stopped working. 

[martinarcher]

Sounds like a fun project.  Sounds like you're already aware but the only risk I can think of with the Pi is corruption of the boot disk when power drops abruptly.  The embedded chips don't suffer from this but you are right the touch screen will be far easier to implement easily with the Pi interfaces.  Good luck, these projects are a blast.  I bought a used power wedge 3 off a member and need to cut it up and get to work fitting it to my old Sunsetter.   Guys like us don't idle well.  😂

[audiofn]

Well work has been keeping me very busy so this has been side tracked.  I do have the unit all tied into the boat but getting the info we need and control has been a bit of an issue.  We did just find some more info today that we may be missing so hopefully that gets us going in the right direction.  Stay tuned.

[audiofn]

We finally got some time to mess with this.  We found 2 things.  If the factory screen is removed you get an error on the upper screeen that the BUSS is down.  We also however did get some communication going and were able to see data.  So it is a start anyhow.  I am currently waiting on a MTC screen to arrive.  I need this because I need to have the buttons on the factory screen working so that I can look for the data on the buss we need.  This is going to be a very long term project for sure.  

[martinarcher]

On 3/20/2023 at 9:01 AM, audiofn said:

We finally got some time to mess with this.  We found 2 things.  If the factory screen is removed you get an error on the upper screeen that the BUSS is down.  We also however did get some communication going and were able to see data.  So it is a start anyhow.  I am currently waiting on a MTC screen to arrive.  I need this because I need to have the buttons on the factory screen working so that I can look for the data on the buss we need.  This is going to be a very long term project for sure.  

Not sure if the factory screen is a required node on the bus or not.  Regardless, be sure after it is removed that you have 60 ohms on the CANbus leads.  There should be two terminating resistors on either end of a CANbus.  One at the controller, and one at the last node on the bus.  If the removed screen had the terminating resistor you will need to add a single 120 ohm resistor back to bring the bus to 60 ohms.  

[audiofn]

On 3/31/2023 at 8:55 AM, martinarcher said:

Not sure if the factory screen is a required node on the bus or not.  Regardless, be sure after it is removed that you have 60 ohms on the CANbus leads.  There should be two terminating resistors on either end of a CANbus.  One at the controller, and one at the last node on the bus.  If the removed screen had the terminating resistor you will need to add a single 120 ohm resistor back to bring the bus to 60 ohms.  

In our testing we pulled the screen and added a custom cable I made to adapt to the CAN bus and connect my hat.  Now that my screen is back in the boat i will tap into the diagnostic port and see if that gives me the same info.  This will be a LONG term project because I have so much going on with work.