Real BMW Dash Cluster For Your Racing Games

Here’s a cool add on that could making racing games just a little more engaging. How about a real instrument cluster? [Herctrap] has written up the schematics and shared the code to get a real car’s instrument cluster to be driven from x-sim. It is a slightly different approach than we’ve seen before, but really not too complicated.While this is still just another accessory sitting on his desk, it really seems to add a considerable amount of feedback to the game. Next he needs to build a motion rig for his seat!

10 thoughts on “Real BMW Dash Cluster For Your Racing Games

  1. It doesn’t look like he’s doing anything too clever. I was hoping for som CANbus integration, which I could back port into my BM to make the matrix display do something more interesting. Or at least set the time correctly (which happens automatically if you’ve got an OEM radio but not a 3rd party one)
    Saying that it’s not too clever, shouldn’t take anything away from it being a reasonably cool hack if you’re into driving games. Can’t wait for someone to integrate a dash unit and steering wheel into an iPad dock and link it into real racing 2 HD . Now that would be impressive in the Apple walled garden!

  2. I was kinda hoping for CAN integration too. The protocols for the matrix display are hackable of course and others have done it to display song titles and other useful things.

  3. I can see this displaying CPU usage and network traffic, along with memory space and HDD space. Turn signals blink when you click left or right, both when center is clicked. Or maybe the speedo tracks your WPM while typing. That would be cool.

  4. This is a cool project. Has anyone done something like this with the stepper driven clocks found in most vehicles post 2000?

    Supposedly the coils are high enough impedance they can be driven directly from microcontroller pins. The trick is getting them to zero without smashing against the end stop.

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