OBD1 ECU with a CANBUS gauge cluster help...

So our chump car runs on a Honda OBD1 P28 ECU. I have a upper gauge cluster from a 2012 Civic Si that has a sequential shift light, speedo, and fuel gauge. It's not a necessary thing but it would clean our dash up a lot. I've had no luck getting three or four different variations of arduino shift lights to work with the tach signal either. I need something that tells the old farts who can't hear or see the current tach to shift (BRIGHT FLASHING LIGHTS!!!)

So does anyone have any experience with getting a canbus dash system to work with a 8 bit ECU? Or is it just a futile attempt and should invest more money into something someones already researched and developed?

Just off the top of my head, I'd say you are trying to speak Chinese medical terminology to a proffessor of ancient Latin. You might be able to translate, but its going to be a long, hard road.

The inputs are just so very, very different.

This will do what you want:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/advertiser-playground/new-sequential-shift-light-with-performance-optimizer-app/125561/page1/

OBD0-2 doesn't matter, it reads off the tach.

Sell the newer Honda stuff and just have one of the old farts buy one of the above.

In reply to Stefan: Thanks for the link. I spent a ton of time re-writing someone elses code for an arduino shift light, tried a few different arduino boards, when I finally got one to work, it only did so until about 4500RPM then it just went haywire and finally the board went poof. Also tried signal conditioners, etc. I was taking the signal straight from the distributor.

Streetwiseguy: That's why I asked before I even dived in. I know people have done it with S2K clusters; but, I'm guessing they are running K-series ecus with jumper harnesses.

I knew as soon as I looked at this diagram that I needed to ask questions lol.

The problem is that obd-1 really wasn't a thing. There was no standard in the same sense as OBD-2. So each manufacturer came up with their own connectors and their own way of generating and presenting trouble codes. Be it blinking lights, separate digit displays, etc....

So there really is no data.output to tap into for gauges and performance data. Still generally traditional independent gauges and dedicated gauge senders in that era. Like the other guy said, You're going to have to tap into the existing tach feed in this case. If you run a full digital dash it'll have to take data straight from the senders.

hhaase wrote: The problem is that obd-1 really wasn't a thing. There was no standard in the same sense as OBD-2. So each manufacturer came up with their own connectors and their own way of generating and presenting trouble codes. Be it blinking lights, separate digit displays, etc.... So there really is no data.output to tap into for gauges and performance data. Still generally traditional independent gauges and dedicated gauge senders in that era. Like the other guy said, You're going to have to tap into the existing tach feed in this case. If you run a full digital dash it'll have to take data straight from the senders.

Yea that's pretty much waht we have now with a traditional JEGS tach, oil pressure/temp, water temp, etc. We had a traqmate for a while; but, the guy who owned it left and started his own Chump team. That was nice because it gave us the shift light function, lap times, etc.

DirtyBird222 wrote: I spent a ton of time re-writing someone elses code for an arduino shift light, tried a few different arduino boards, when I finally got one to work, it only did so until about 4500RPM then it just went haywire and finally the board went poof. Also tried signal conditioners, etc. I was taking the signal straight from the distributor.

If that signal from the distributor was the negative side of an internal coil, then the board was fried by short 3-digit voltage spikes, common mistake.

A CoilX board from AutosportLabs can convert such a signal into a safe, clean 5v square wave.

(On my Corolla, when I went to CoPs I had to get a device made to convert a square wave into a spike signal to drive the stock tach. From the factory, the coil negative drives the tach which outputs a square wave to the ECU!)

GameboyRMH wrote:

DirtyBird222 wrote: I spent a ton of time re-writing someone elses code for an arduino shift light, tried a few different arduino boards, when I finally got one to work, it only did so until about 4500RPM then it just went haywire and finally the board went poof. Also tried signal conditioners, etc. I was taking the signal straight from the distributor.

If that signal from the distributor was the negative side of an internal coil, then the board was fried by short 3-digit voltage spikes, common mistake. A CoilX board from AutosportLabs can convert such a signal into a safe, clean 5v square wave. (On my Corolla, when I went to CoPs I had to get a device made to convert a square wave into a spike signal to drive the stock tach. From the factory, the coil negative drives the tach which outputs a square wave to the ECU!)

Thanks for that info! That same signal works fine on the analog tach we have. The problem is no one looks at the analog tach (which is good eyes on road). I'll have to try that out. The board isn't toast though. It's currently got new code on it and is powering one of my daughters night lights with a wavy color spectrum

Sequential shift lights are the easy answer here. My Revlight (no longer made) flashes at peak rpm and uses colored LEDs to indicate rpm. It's also completely self-contained and built for the use, so no messing around. The Shift-I or other products will do the same thing.