Welcome to my DIY Dashboard project using an Arduino.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping board that you can use to do basically whatever you want. I had one laying around and decided to do something cool with it connecting with the iRacing API. The idea of a dashboard was the first one that came to mind. I’ve started this project back in April 2011 and you can see some early prototyping videos at the end of this post.

Closeup on the dashboard

Up and running

The dashboard I’m posting here have the following features:

• RPM lights
• Gear indicator
• Pit limiter, rev limiter and low fuel indicators
• 5 general purpose switches and buttons
• 1 rotary encoder for dialing

I bought all the components that I needed (with the exception of the Arduino itself) in a regular electronic component shop. You can see the parts list below and it’s also included in the RAR file at the end of the post. The total cost of this project was about U$ 27,00 excluding the Arduino (43,00 brazilian reais) and was really fun to do it. For it to work, I had to assemble everything into a perfboard, code the Arduino firmare to receive the data from the computer and light up the whole thing and also code the server software that grabs the data from the iRacing API and send it through a USB serial connection to the Arduino.

For the buttons to work, you’ll need to install PPJoy to emulate a joystick and receive the input from the buttons on the dashboard.

Parts list and avarage price

In the pictures below you can take a look on how it looks like inside the dashboard. I don’t have much electronics and soldering experience so it turned out not that beautiful, but hey, it works! You can also see the schematics for all the electronic components.

Inside the plastic case

Schematics

I’m releasing all the schematics, parts list, source code and firmware for this project. In the RAR is included:

• VB.NET source code for interfacing with iRacing API, Arduino serial port and PPJoy DLL
• iWrapClient.dll and PPJoyDLL.dll (I coded it too, but I’m releasing only the DLL)
• Arduino source code ready for upload to the board
• Schematics
• Parts list

The contents of this project is distributed as “donationware”. If you find them useful, please consider doing a small donation.

DOWNLOAD: http://www.fergonez.net/files/iRacingArduino_10.rar

Videos

FINAL PRODUCT

This project was featured in the InsideSimRacing TWISR episode of May 6th. I’d like to thank Shaun and Tom as well as Darin and Jessica for showing my project on the show. Really cool to see it there

EARLY PROTOTYPES