Digital Instrument cluster 2008-2012 Tesla Roadster

[MJP13]

I have been working on my upgrades for my car and this is going to be a deep dive in the wiring way above anything I can figure out. Does any one have the information or parts of the information that could be put together that AIM technical group could use to program digital Dash.

Aim Technical services said thy need endianness, CAN ID's, gains, offsets, etc. to set up the hardware for digital dash that would fit in tesla Roadster. They could then program one of the Instrument already built instrument clusters that have been manufactured for the lotus Elise as a plug and play part for the Roadster. They confirmed the original Roadster instrument cluster is a modified Lotus Part so it should drop right in.

 

[eHorses]

@markwj may be able to help?

 

[markwj]

Most of the messages are known, and that part of the dashboard is already on the correct CAN bus. Should not be difficult. I will respond to your 'conversation' PM directly.

 

[markwj]

I presume these guys are talking about this:

Aim MX2E Lotus Plug & Play Dash Logger Kit - Aim Technologies

The New Aim MX 2E Lotus Plug & Play Dash Logger Kit

www.aimtechnologies.com

 

[MJP13]

They have several pieces of hardware that they already manufacture that are going to look at for best possible fit if they can program one of them to work in the roadster

 

[hanknum]

Let me know if you guys get something worked out... I would be interested.

Thanks.

 

[jason.tv]

I was working with Sanis from onpointdyno.com and Gruber to do these canbus points; Sanis can Definitely do this so if anyone wants to pick up continuations on this project please contact me and I will update you on our conversations.

He is ready and willing to create this for us; I just lacked the knowledge on how to proceed to get this completed.

Gruber is extremely interested as well because they can re-create the vds screen which is known to fade in a lot of cars.

 

[markwj]

Here is what I have. Happy to share. If anybody needs clarification, eMail me...

The Tesla Roadster Instrumentation CAN bus is clocked at 1MHz. Despite the high speed, message volume is relatively low. It contains the VMS, VDS, TPMS, and Instrument Cluster modules, and is externally accessible via the DIAG port in the passenger footwell. It is not on the OBDII connector.

The messages on this bus are all broadcast (not PID requests), and primarily "VAX" (little-endian) order. Some are multiplexed (like 0x400), and some are a form of custom request-broadcast system to instruct the VMS to start/stop transmitting certain information.



The diagnostic connector is here:

openvehicles/CAN-RE-Tool
openvehicles/CAN-RE-Tool

Notes on the CAN bus are here:

openvehicles/CAN-RE-Tool

In particular:

• ID #0x400 is used for data and commands to the Instrument Cluster
• ID #0x402 appears to be data and responses from the Instrument Cluster.
• We have not done much work with 0x402, but 0x400 is pretty well understood.
• The teslaroadster_canbusnotes.txt document contains what we know of that bus.
• We’ve only verified the messages that we use in our OVMS system, and many others are guesswork.

A replacement instrument cluster would work off the 0x400 message, but could also pickup other messages on that bus (for example; charging status, odometer, trip, temperatures, VIN, TPMS, etc).

 

[markwj]

One other approach, if the volume is not high enough to attract a manufacturer, is to find some hardware from someone willing to release the base firmware source code and build tools to customise. I am sure several here in the community would take on that work. I don't think a simple replacement of the instrument cluster (handling two CAN bus messages) would be difficult. However, taking on the other VDS functionality would be a lot more work.