Game boy with custom cartridge mounted on car dashboard

A Game Boy Speedometer, Just Because You Can

January 15, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 10 Comments

From a practical standpoint, [John] may be correct that his recent creation is the “world’s worst digital dash”, but we’re still oddly enamored with the idea of using a Nintendo Game Boy as a digital speedometer. Pulling it off meant interfacing the handheld with the vehicle’s CAN bus system, so whether you’re into retro gaming or car hacking, this project has something to offer.

Showing real-time vehicle speed on the Game Boy sounds like it should be relatively easy, but the iconic game system wasn’t exactly built for such a task. Its 2 MHz CPU and 160×144 pixel dot-matrix screen were every kid’s dream in 1989, but using it as a car dashboard is pushing it. To bridge that gap, [John] designed two custom circuit boards. One interfaces with the Game Boy, intercepting its memory requests and feeding it data from a microcontroller. The other processes the CAN bus signals, translating speed information into a form the Game Boy can display. [John] used inexpensive tools and software to read the CAN bus data, and used GBDK-2020 to write the software in C. His video goes in great detail on how to do this.

Months of work have gone into decoding the Game Boy’s data bus and creating a schematic for the interface board. Tricking the Game Boy into thinking it was loading a game, while actually displaying incoming speed data. The screen’s low resolution and slow refresh rate rendered it barely readable in a moving vehicle. But [John]’s goal wasn’t practicality — it was just proving it could be done.

Want to dive deep into the Game Boy? Have you seen the Ultimate Game Boy talk?

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Train Speed Signaling Adapted For Car

September 11, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 33 Comments

One major flaw of designing societies around cars is the sheer amount of signage that drivers are expected to recognize, read, and react to. It’s a highly complex system that requires constant vigilance to a relatively boring task with high stakes, which is not something humans are particularly well adapted for. Modern GPS equipment can solve a few of these attention problems, with some able to at least show the current speed limit and perhaps an ongoing information feed of the current driving conditions., Trains, on the other hand, solved a lot of these problems long ago. [Philo] and [Tris], two train aficionados, were recently able to get an old speed indicator from a train and get it working in a similar way in their own car.

The speed indicator itself came from a train on the Red Line of the T, Boston’s subway system run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). Trains have a few unique ways of making sure they go the correct speed for whatever track they’re on as well as avoid colliding with other trains, and this speed indicator is part of that system. [Philo] and [Tris] found out through some reverse engineering that most of the parts were off-the-shelf components, and were able to repair a few things as well as eventually power everything up. With the help of an Arduino, an I/O expander, and some transistors to handle the 28V requirement for the speed indicator, the pair set off in their car to do some real-world testing.

This did take a few tries to get right, as there were some issues with the power supply as well as some bugs to work out in order to interface with the vehicle’s OBD-II port. They also tried to use GPS for approximating speed as well, and after a few runs around Boston they were successful in getting this speed indicator working as a speedometer for their car. It’s an impressive bit of reverse engineering as well as interfacing newer technology with old. For some other bits of train technology reproduced in the modern world you might also want to look at this recreation of a train whistle.

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Tech In Plain Sight: Speedometers

August 22, 2024 by Al Williams 29 Comments

In a modern car, your speedometer might look analog, but it is almost certainly digital and driven by the computer that has to monitor all sorts of things anyway. But how did they work before your car was a rolling computer complex? The electronic speedometer has been around for well over a century and, when you think about it, qualifies as a technlogical marvel.

If you already know how they work, this isn’t a fair question. But if you don’t, think about this. Your dashboard has a cable running into it. The inner part of the cable spins at some rate, which is related to either the car’s transmission or a wheel sensor. How do you make a needle deflect based on the speed?

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An ESP Makes A Bicycle Odometer

August 7, 2024 by Jenny List 4 Comments

If you’d like to measure the speed of your cycling then it’s easy enough to buy a cycle computer, but as [Clovis Fritzen] has done it’s also an option to build one. The result of his work is a smart PCB on which the speed is indicated with a row of LEDs.

The sensor is a straightforward affair, a reed switch with a magnet on a wheel, which is sensed by an ESP8266. The six LEDs are charlieplexeed over three lines. To keep the supply voltage correct for the ESP from the uncertain state of a lithium battery, a small buck-boost module is used. Sadly the code doesn’t seem to make the speed available via the wireless part of the processor, but we’re guessing that a bit of extra software work could fix that.

The result when put in a box on the handlebars, is a smart but simple instrument that would aid any bike. It’s by no means the first one we’ve brought you and we doubt it will be the last.

GPS At Any Speed

May 13, 2024 by Al Williams 39 Comments

[Mellow_Labs] was asked to create a GPS speedometer. It seems simple, but of course, the devil is in the details. You can see the process and the result in the video below.

We have to admit that he does things step-by-step. The first step was to test the GPS module’s interface. Then, he tried computing the speed from it and putting the result on a display. However, testing in the field showed that the display was not suitable for outdoor use.

That prompted another version with an OLED screen. Picking the right components is critical. It struck us that you probably need a fast update rate from the GPS, too, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. Continue reading “GPS At Any Speed” →

This GPS Speedometer Hangs Off Your Handlebars

April 25, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

If you can ride a bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars, you can do just about anything. You can take apart a remote control, and you can almost put it back together. You can listen in on a two meter repeater and you can build a GPS module speedometer. That’s what [Jeremy Cook] did with just a few parts, a little 3D design, and some handy zip ties to hold it onto the handlebars, the handlebars.

The electronics for this build are relatively simple, based on an Arduino Pro Mini because that’s just about the smallest readily available development board you’ll be able to find. To this is a LiPo, a LiPo charging circuit, a GPS module, and a single RGB LED. The code gets some data from the GPS module and figures out a speed. This is then translated into a color — red, yellow, or green depending on whether you’re stationary, below 5 km/h, or above 5 km/h.

All these electronics are stuffed into a 3D-printed enclosure. The majority of the enclosure is printed in black, with a translucent top that serves as a great diffuser for the LED. Just two zip ties hold this GPS speedometer onto the handlebars, and from the video below, everything looks great. The GPS module does take some time to get data at first, but that’s a common problem with GPS units that have been powered off for a few days. If only someone made a GPS module that could keep time with no metronome, with no metronome.

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Interfacing With A Digital Speedometer

December 25, 2017 by Tom Nardi 5 Comments

After swapping the engine out in his scooter, [James Stanley] made an unfortunate discovery. The speedometer was digitally controlled, and while the original engine had a sensor which would generate pulses for it to interpret, his new engine didn’t. Learning that the original sensor would pull the signal wire to ground each time it detected a tooth of one of the spinning gears, [James] reasoned he needed to find a way to detect the scooter’s speed and create these pulses manually.

To find the scooter’s speed, he installed a magnet on the front wheel and a hall effect sensor on the fork to detect each time it passed by. Since the wheel is of a known circumference, timing the pulses from the sensor allows calculation of the current speed. A GPS receiver could be used if you wanted fewer wires, but the hall effect sensor on the wheel is simple and reliable. With the speed of the scooter now known, he needed to turn that into a signal the speedometer understands.

Speedometer controller potted with resin.

[James] wrote a program for an ATmega that would take the input from the wheel sensor and use it to create a PWM signal. This PWM signal drives a transistor, which alternates the speedometer sensor wire between low and floating. With a bit of experimentation, he was able to come up with an algorithm which equated wheel speed to the gearbox speed the speedometer wanted with accuracy close enough for his purposes.

While the software side of this project is interesting in its own right, the hardware is an excellent case study in producing robust electronic devices suitable for use on vehicles. [James] 3D printed a shallow case for the circuit board, and potted the entire device with black polyurethane resin. He even had the forethought to make sure he had a debugging LED and programming connector before he encapsulated everything (which ended up saving the project).

While the specific scenario encountered by [James] is unlikely to befall others, his project is an excellent example of not only interfacing with exiting electronics but producing rugged and professional looking hardware without breaking the bank. Even if scooters aren’t your thing, there are lessons to be learned from this write-up.

For all you two wheeled hackers out there, we’ve covered similar projects designed for bicycles, as well as some very slick digital speedometer mods for motorcycles.