Ever wondered what goes on under the hood of your car? Wish you could peek inside the engine management system and read values from it? Annoyed that your dashboard displays a cryptic “Check Engine” light (yep, the engine is still there) but gives absolutely no explanation what the problem might be?
Today I tried to make something with the Arduino RGB LED matrix shield on hand. This idea came up when I was going to bed last night. I what to let the color of the matrix changing according to the change of my car engine’s RPM (or some other realtime data, maybe throttle position) as well as the character displayed on it.
On-Board Diagnostics, or OBD, in an automotive context, is a generic term referring to a vehicle’s self-diagnostic and reporting capability. OBD systems give the vehicle owner or a repair technician access to state of health information for various vehicle sub-systems. The amount of diagnostic information available via OBD has varied widely since the introduction in the early 1980s of on-board vehicle computers, which made OBD possible.
The ELM327 board is modified to output 5V power and UART serial data.
