You think of digital displays as modern, but the idea isn’t that new. We had clocks, for example, with wheels and flip digits for years. The Racal frequency counter that [Thomas Scherrer] is playing with in the video below has columns of digits with lamps behind them. You just need the right plastic and ten lightbulbs per digit, and you are in business. Easy enough to accomplish in 1962.
Inside the box was surprising. The stack of PC boards looks more like a minicomputer than a piece of test gear. There were a few novel items inside, too, ranging from a glass-encapsulated crystal to an interesting method of selecting the line voltage.
Ford is looking to make their new Maverick compact truck stand out, and so far, it seems to be working. Not only is it exceptionally cheap for a brand-new hybrid, truck or otherwise, but Ford actively encourages owners to modify their new ride. From standardized mounting points throughout the cabin intended for 3D printed upgrades, to an auxiliary 12 VDC line run to the bed specifically for powering user supplied hardware.
But we doubt even the most imaginative of Blue Oval engineers could have predicted that somebody would rip out the whole dash module and replace it with one from a higher-end Ford this early in the game. While many people can’t even find one of these trucks on the lot, [Tyvemattis] on the Maverick Truck Club forum has detailed his efforts to replace the relatively uninspired stock dash module of his truck with an all-digital version pulled from a 2020 Ford Escape Titanium.
Ford’s rendering of the original Maverick dash module.
Now we say “effort”, but as it turns out, the swap went off nearly without a hitch. The new digital module not only appears to be the identical size and shape as the original, but they both use the same connectors. Presumably this is because both vehicles are based on Ford’s scalable C2 platform, and likely means more components from this family of vehicles such as the Lincoln Corsair or new Bronco could be installed into the Maverick.
So what’s the downside? According to [Tyvemattis], the computer is throwing error messages as the Maverick doesn’t have a lot of the hardware that the dash is trying to communicate with. He also can’t change the vehicle’s driving mode, and the cruise control can only be enabled when the truck is stopped. But probably the most annoying issue is that the fuel gauge is off by 50%, so when the tank is full, it shows you’ve only got half a tank. At least one other user on the forum believes this could be alleviated by modifying the fuel sensor wiring, so it will be interesting to see how difficult a fix it ends up being.
We’ve seen several so-called “digital dash” upgrades over the years that either augment, or completely replace, a vehicle’s original dashboard indicators with new displays. Whether its seven segment LEDs or a full-on graphical interface powered by the Raspberry Pi, the end result is the same: a dashboard that looks wildly different than it did when the car rolled off the assembly line.
But this LED dashboard project from [Flyin’ Miata] takes a slightly different approach. Rather than replace the analog gauges entirely, rings of RGB LEDs of the same diameter were placed behind their matte black faces. When the LEDs are off you’d never notice them, but once they kick on, the light is clearly visible through the material.
LEDs can easily shine through the gauge face.
So far, it looks like most of the work seems to have been put into the tachometer. The firmware running on the CAN equipped Adafruit Feather M4 can do things such as light up a dynamic redline based on current engine temperature. It will also light up the LEDs to follow the analog gauge as it moves around, which might not have much practical application, but certainly looks cool.
On the speedometer side, the LEDs seem to be used primarily as warning indicators. As demonstrated in the video below, the whole gauge can light up bright red to indicate a critical situation such as low oil pressure. If you wanted to, the system could also be configured with different colors corresponding to various possible fault conditions.
If you spent the 1970s obsessively browsing through the Radio Shack catalog, you probably remember the DX-160 shortwave receiver. You might have even had one. The radio looked suspiciously like the less expensive Eico of the same era, but it had that amazing-looking bandspread dial, instead of the Eico’s uncalibrated single turn knob number 1 to 10. Finding an exact frequency was an artful process of using both knobs, but [Frank] decided to refit his with a digital frequency display.
Even if you don’t have a DX-160, the techniques [Frank] uses are pretty applicable to old receivers like this. In this case, the radio is a single conversion superhet with a variable frequency oscillator (VFO), so you need only read that frequency and then add or subtract the IF before display. If you can find a place to tap the VFO without perturbing it too much, you should be able to pull the same stunt.
[George] is a Neo Geo aficionado, and among his collection of paraphernalia, he has a MVS-Mini game console. His mini “Multi Video System” is a 2-slot model, meaning that it can hold two game cartridges at a time, which are indicated by plastic cards inserted in the cabinet’s face plate. Instead of swapping those cards out each time he changed cartridges, he thought it would be far cooler to install digital displays instead.
He scoured just about every retail store he could before finding a handful of small 5” digital picture frames that looked to fit the bill. After some careful cabinet modifications he had them wired up and ready for display. The frames don’t hold a ton of pictures, but they do support the use of SD cards. [George] says that he’ll likely just buy a ton of small SD cards, swapping them out whenever he changes games, though over time that might become as tedious as swapping out the plastic cards.
We would love to see [George] take his new digital display up a level, so be sure to share your ideas in the comments. Perhaps we can persuade him to automate things a bit.
