Karter16's Silbergrau E46 M3 Journal

[karter16]

He's pretty cool about replacing HW. He sent me a couple boards when we were debugging the FW for the latest HW. They cost nothing to manufacture, so retaining the client is likely worth a lot more than one board.

Also, he's pretty active on the Gauge.S discord, in case you need to reach him quicker.

You were spot on with this advice. He did some quick troubleshooting with me over email to confirm the board is at fault and he's shipping me out a new unit this week :-)

[heinzboehmer]

yeah - not an ideal situation to be dealing with but it is what it is. Will see how I get on when I hear back from Sorek (think he was on vacation until today). I appreciate it's a tough one with this sort of product. As far as he's concerned I equally could have done something wrong to fry the board so will see how it goes.

He's pretty cool about replacing HW. He sent me a couple boards when we were debugging the FW for the latest HW. They cost nothing to manufacture, so retaining the client is likely worth a lot more than one board.

Also, he's pretty active on the Gauge.S discord, in case you need to reach him quicker.

[karter16]

Ah that's annoying. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to resolve!

yeah - not an ideal situation to be dealing with but it is what it is. Will see how I get on when I hear back from Sorek (think he was on vacation until today). I appreciate it's a tough one with this sort of product. As far as he's concerned I equally could have done something wrong to fry the board so will see how it goes.

[heinzboehmer]

Ah that's annoying. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to resolve!

[karter16]

I've had the ribbons for the screens fail on me. The case bends them at too sharp of an angle and causes breaks. Try forcing wifi on (there's some setting you can set to true on the SD card, look at the github wiki) and scanning for networks with your phone. If you see "Logger.S" (I think), then the board is most likely fine.

The screens are this: https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-SSD13...dp/B0CFF2QW5V/

Should be easier to find a source for those than to have another board shipped out to you from the UK. Hopefully the screen is your problem!

Edit: The other thing you can do is to try to talk to the uprocessor directly. It's just an ESP32, so any cheap programmer will let you do that. I'm pretty sure that even the prod FW builds print something out over serial when the device boots. More info: https://github.com/handmade0octopus/Gauge.S-sd-updater

I also wrote a hacky validation FW that you can flash onto the board just to see if it is working: https://github.com/heinzboehmer/Gaug...54HP-Validator

Use the sd card updater afterwards to flash back the FW from the main Gauge.S repo.

Thanks for this - I forced WiFi on and powered up but no dice.

Will wait for a reply from Sorek before going down the programmer route I think but that's some good options thanks!


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[heinzboehmer]

Well the Gauge.S appears to be dead on arrival. No action when connected to 12VDC bench supply. I've reached out to Sorek to find out whether there's any diagnostics I can do to confirm whether the board or display is at fault, but given the screen came in a lovely 3d printed case and the board itself was just chucked loose in the bubblewrap envelope I'm guessing it's probably the board.

Will update when I have more info.

I've had the ribbons for the screens fail on me. The case bends them at too sharp of an angle and causes breaks. Try forcing wifi on (there's some setting you can set to true on the SD card, look at the github wiki) and scanning for networks with your phone. If you see "Logger.S" (I think), then the board is most likely fine.

The screens are this: https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-SSD13...dp/B0CFF2QW5V/

Should be easier to find a source for those than to have another board shipped out to you from the UK. Hopefully the screen is your problem!

Edit: The other thing you can do is to try to talk to the uprocessor directly. It's just an ESP32, so any cheap programmer will let you do that. I'm pretty sure that even the prod FW builds print something out over serial when the device boots. More info: https://github.com/handmade0octopus/Gauge.S-sd-updater

I also wrote a hacky validation FW that you can flash onto the board just to see if it is working: https://github.com/heinzboehmer/Gaug...54HP-Validator

Use the sd card updater afterwards to flash back the FW from the main Gauge.S repo.

[karter16]

Well the Gauge.S appears to be dead on arrival. No action when connected to 12VDC bench supply. I've reached out to Sorek to find out whether there's any diagnostics I can do to confirm whether the board or display is at fault, but given the screen came in a lovely 3d printed case and the board itself was just chucked loose in the bubblewrap envelope I'm guessing it's probably the board.

Will update when I have more info.

[collins7782]

thanks for the info.

[karter16]

Well pretty pleased with this for a first prototype.





The insert fits perfectly and the two pieces fit together perfectly. I'm stoked that I got the internal geometries right for the insert as they were the hardest bit.

I will do some measurements of the prints to make sure they are perfectly dimensionally accurate, and provided they are I need to adjust the seat between the top of the body and the cap by about 0.5mm in diameter and height. The printed cap fits on the OE body, but the OE cap is ever so slightly too large to fit the printed body. I want to make sure I'm as close to the original as possible with this so will make that adjustment.

Key thing though is I can now go ahead and design the pockets for the grip pads and include the first iteration of that in the next prototype as well.

[0-60motorsports]

Oh that sounds like an awesome idea! Id be interested in one pending the finished result.

[karter16]

I got the chance today (making the most of winter before the weather improves and I get started on house projects again) to get started on a project I've been wanting to do for a long time.



The goal here is a 1:1 replica of the SMG shifter knob. Why? It occurred to me some time ago that modern manufacturing techniques present an opportunity to create a twist on the stock SMG shifter to make something a little bit unique.

The plan is to have the knob 3D printed in titanium and then finish it to a polished surface which will hopefully be a cool twist on the chrome of the original item. The 4 leather pads I'm planning to do as leather-covered TPU with an ABS or similar backing (drawing heavy inspiration here from how heinzboehmer recovered the pads on his SMG).

Why titanium? It is of course a PITA to finish, and it might not end up working out, but I've decided to give it a try for two reasons. Mostly because it's a cool thing to try, secondly - thermal conductivity. One of the nice things about the OE shifter being plastic is that the shifter doesn't feel ridiculously cold to touch on a winter morning. This is because plastic has poor thermal conductivity. Titanium of course has much higher thermal conductivity than plastic, but also it's an awful lot less than stainless steel or aluminium, so will help to reduce this effect.


The model above as you see doesn't have the pockets cut for the leather pads, reason being I want to do a test print to make sure that I've got the internal geometries right first in case I need to change anything that affects the pockets for the pads. I'm intending to reuse the OE clear acrylic centre insert which mates the shifter with the shaft, so I need to make sure it's a spot-on fit.

Anyway - first draft is being printed and will do some test fitting when I get the parts.

In the meantime here are a few screen caps of the two parts:

[Bry5on]

Man, that came out amazing. Wish I would have taken the time to do that with mine.

+1 to this, I’m envious

[heinzboehmer]

Man, that came out amazing. Wish I would have taken the time to do that with mine.

[karter16]

When deciding on the Gauge.S one of the ancillary decisions I needed to make was how/where to mount it. When he installed his Bryson designed an enclosure to go in the ash tray which is very nice, and I decided I would go with the same approach as it allows for the Gauge.S to be hidden away when not using the screen. It's also an easy swap back to the ash tray at any point.

The centre console is specific to LHD/RHD, in that the cigarette lighter is on the driver's side. This meant that the enclosure Bryson designed needed to be mirrored for my RHD to keep the screen centered. Bryson kindly shared the CAD file with me and I was able to quickly make up a mirrored version for RHD. I also removed the features that I don't need (internal mount for the GPS unit and mount/faceplate holes for USB-C charging).

The end result looked like this:



As you can see it was printed on a textured bed which gives it a lovely effect.

Now this all seemed too easy to me, so I decided to make it more difficult by doing a painted finish to more closely match the rest of the centre console components.

As always with painting it's all in the preparation:



This was then followed by several coats of matte black, before being sanded back to a completely smooth finish and then top coated with several more coats of matte black.

I'm super happy with how it's turned out:







In person it looks perfect to me, I can't find a single imperfection in the paint that I'd fix if I could.

I'll wait for this to properly harden and then do some photos showing it in place.

Just got to wait for the rest of the bits to arrive now!

[karter16]

It’s yours if you want it. PM me your address.

Oh man I ordered new connectors after Heinz shared the part numbers - wish I had seen your post first! Thanks very much for the offer though - I do really appreciate it!