A Real Dash For A Truck Simulator

[Leon] plays Euro Truck Simulator 2, and like any good simulator, there are people out there building consoles, cockpits, and dashboards. In [Leon]’s case, he wanted a dashboard for his virtual trucks and cobbled one together out of a dash taken from a VW Polo.

This project was inspired by [Silas Parker] and his Arduino-based dashboard made out of a cardboard box, some servos, and a few LEDs. It worked, but [Leon] realized just about every dashboard made in the last decade or so has a CAN bus. You can just buy a CAN bus shield for an Arduino, and a dashboard can be easily found at any junkyard.

Right now, [Leon] is in the process of finding the CAN bus addresses of the relavent dials and LEDs on the dashboard. He found the tachometer at 0x280, and a bunch of indicator lights can be found at 0x470. Combined with a standard computer steering wheel and the telemetry SDK for Euro Truck Simulator 2, [Leon] has the beginnings of a virtual big rig on his desk.

10 thoughts on “A Real Dash For A Truck Simulator

  1. Nicely done.

    That’s a surprisingly fun game. Whether you play it for the simulation or play it just for the fun of it, it can easily keep one occupied for hours. I don’t think I would ever take it as far as [Leon] has, but kudos to him for putting this together.

  2. So, real trucking companies desperately want to replace their drivers with Google robots so they can stop having to pay real people real money to deliver real cargo. Meanwhile people at home are delivering virtual cargo, in virtual trucks for free right now? Am I the only one wondering how long it will take for a big company to come to the logical Enders Game solution?

    1. I’m imagining a really literal implementation, where the truckers don’t know they’re driving real truck, and the spectacular clusterfuck that would follow. “Lol, the AI in this game is really funny. Look how all the other cars freak out when I start ramming one of them.”

  3. Hey Mr Leon I’m in the same boat as you!! I play ETS2 also (the wife says too much) and I wanted something more realistic then just a tv! So I just found a crashed truck on Craigslist and have purchased the dash and steering wheel out of it. I have no idea how to get the gauges to work with ETS2 — would you please contact me and help me?? That would just be so awesome.

    My email is jgarrett123@hotmail.com and phone is 318-918-9569

    I would really appreciate hearing from you

    John G

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