Installing a Customizable OBD-II Monitor and Music Player in a 1997 Honda with Raspberry Pi
Paul Slocum's retro-style system allows him to monitor engine data from an OBD-II adapter and play tracks from a USB flash drive.
You might have seen many interesting Raspberry Pi projects lately, but this time Paul Slocum has managed to use the board to read real-time engine info by designing a customizable OBD-II monitor and music player for his 1997 Honda.
The OBD-II monitor automatically turns on and off with the car as the Raspberry Pi software connects to a Bluetooth LE OBD-II dongle. So, the connection between the port and the Raspberry Pi/screen module is wireless.a
Now, there can be monitoring of data from the OBD-II adapter and even music. The audio system plays tunes right out of the folders (though Slocum's using the word "disc" to keep it consistent with the retro car) from the attached USB flash drive. Currently, he's using the Raspberry Pi’s analog audio output, but we can expect additional Bluetooth audio support in the future.
The code is written in C++ language using SDL for graphics and touch. The interfacing screen is a 3.5" Waveshare IPS screen connected via GPIO.
You can read about five OBD-II values per second but this depends on the number of parameters you have selected. If you plan to try it with Raspberry Pi Zero then unfortunately it won’t work as it doesn’t have Bluetooth, but you can use Raspberry Pi Zero W instead.
According to the Slocum, future plans include adding the ability to rotate or flip the display, as well as a warning light when some parameter falls into a specified range.
The goal is to release the project as open source on GitHub so that you can replicate it yourself and personalize the layout, graphics, fonts, and OBD-II PIDs. We can expect good documentation and the C++ script to be available in the next month or two. Until then, you can follow along with his Reddit thread here.
