Product 3

Automotive digital LCD dashboards

1. Introduction

In the past automobile meant mechanics. Then mechanics and electrics. And today it means mechanics and electronics. Modern car is sophisticated unity of high-accuracy mechanics and high-end electronics. Today microprocessors, those creatures of science world, are everywhere. They are small in size, reliable in functioning, effective in controlling various parameters. No wonder they have found their proper place in car-building industry, where control of parameters of any kind is in high demand.

Modern automotive microprocessors are highly integrated hybrid systems, that contain central processing unit (CPU), graphic processing unit (GPU) and additional peripheral for interacting with other chips and units, like CAN, I²C and UART interfaces — that is why they called systems on chip — SoC.

Maybe the first thought, the first picture when mentioning car is wheel and dashboard. Everybody who likes cars and driving loves that environment — well-shaped wheel, curved lines of torpedo, rows of gauges, switches and buttons. In collaboration with talented designer Michail Mukovoz Librow developed this marvelous product — digital LCD dashboard.

2. Digital LCD dashboard

The aim we persuaded in this project was to create compact, reliable and effective solution for digital car dashboard. Instrumental cluster development includes three major fealds: hardware, firmware and graphical design.

Hardware includes components selection and PCB (printed circuit board) design — for this case we selected Fujitsu SoC automotive processor, which has impressive characteristics: it has 2D and 3D graphical engine, capable to render multilayered frames of up to 1024×768 pixels size, power effective ARM CPU core with excellent performance and a bunch of interfaces for in-car integration.

Graphical design — gauges drawings, their placing and graphical interface was created by Michail Mukovoz.

The most important part of the firmware — graphics rendering pipline — was developed using techiques of computer graphics and digital image processing (DSP, DIP), most of the code was written in C. Combination of the chip performance and thorough programming gave an impressive result — the whole dashboard whith every indicator in action could be rendered just in frame blank period at 60 Hz. That is even single buffering rendering is enough for smooth and antialiased animation.

As result we got integrated closed solution that could be easely modified for any graphical design and adapted for any embedded platform. The entire digital dashboard solution consist of SoC processor, flash and dynamic memory, touch-screen, LCD unit and embedded firmware, which includes graphics rendering pipeline, interface system and graphical design.

3. Available options

For digital automotive instrumental cluster available the following options:

• Graphical design development according to custom requirements in style, functionality and interface.
• Implementation of custom graphic controls and indicators.
• Hardware development: PCB, component selection and sourcing.
• Hardware integration with existing on-board systems like navigation, night vision and rear view camera.
• Graphics rendering firmware development and adaptation for target platform and processor.
• Interface driver development for communication and interaction with existing on-board systems.
• Electornic cluster production.
• Service and support of the products.

Contact Librow — inquiry@librow.com.