Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
Wow, wish I could help but this isn't in my repetoire. Definitely subscribed to see what people say.
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
The problem you might have is interference from other electrical devices. It may not, but since these are warning lights, they might trigger by accident, you need to be careful in your design. Using a CAN or LIN is possibly an option, but these are not going to be supported by the arduino and will need a knowledge of these networks. There are other options, but they're going to need better understanding of how data is transmitted.
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
I've kinda thought of that, and if it becomes an issue I'll just have the 12v going to the leds switched and then there would be no way for them to turn on. And I would think that if the arduino was off and they somehow turned on they would just be "on" not flashing which would just look like a lot of amber markers around the car.
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
Well not too much progress has been made on this.
Still working on most of the code, the biggest part would be the menu system that the user would navigate on the lcd.
I'm also waiting for some my shipment of products from sparkfun that I was able to buy from their free day promotion. Some of the things are a wiichuck adapter, a screwshield, and 6 mosfets.
AND I'm also working on a ATX to bench powersupply mod that I'm going to use to test my led system.
If anyone has experience with a menu hierarchy system for the arduino and could help me, that would be great. I'm really new to arduino stuff, and just as new with coding in c/c++. I have some example code for menus but I've not been able to pick it apart yet.
Link to an example of the menu hierarchy.
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
the menu system should be pretty easy. check out the arduino forums at www.arduino.cc as well for tips and advice, as well as examples. I want to do something similar with my bench PSU mod, and be able to switch between voltage and current, but I'm still trying to find a suitable inexpensive current monitor (3 actually, one for each line)
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
I've been posting there too. So far they've only pointed me at the library and haven't explained much. I could be wrong but from what I gather, but in the example code it looks like there's only 2 levels to the menu. I know more are possible since I've seen things do it, but I'm not sure how.
What I would really like to be able to do is use ModKit, but that's still in alpha testing and I don't think they are going to give out any more invites as they are so close to going into open beta.
So back to scouring the internet for a tutorial on the menus.
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
yea I want an invite for Modkit SOOOOO bad :D
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
So I got my mosfets in today but when I tried to test them they just stayed "on" regardless of if there was 5v on the gate or not. I tried running both sides (12v & gnd) through it and both times it would just turn on.
Anyone have any ideas?
Re: Arduino controlled car led system.
So with some help I figured out the problem with the mosfets. Well the problem was more of how I was testing them. The gate of the mosfet needs to be able to "drain" the charge that's on that pin so it can go "low" and then when you send a signal (5v) to it, it goes "high". So to fix this I put ground on the gate and the leds turned off, and as soon as I hit it with 5v they turned on. So I'll have to add a 10k pull down resistor on the gate to gnd.