A project to create a Tesla display unit for the Tesla Model 3 or Model Y which do not have an instrument cluster above the steering wheel, unlike the Model S and X which do.
Quite a lot of hardware and software development was required including learning technologies that I had not encountered before in order to arrive at a working prototype.
I will be fully documenting the project over a few posts below that explain the rationale for the project and how I went about creating a display unit that provides driver information directly from the vehicle in real time.
Please check back here for further updates and new posts in addition to the ones below.
When Tesla released the Model 3, they removed the instrument cluster that is traditionally behind the steering wheel. The information normally presented there is instead provided on the large landscape display in the center of the dashboard
I believe that they did this for two main reasons; cost cutting and also because they expected that these cars would be capable of self driving at some point in the (near?) future rendering a driver and the need for extra driver information redundant....
In my previous post I asserted that Tesla vehicles are at their core computers on wheels. The electronic and mechanical systems are designed in a modular fashion and communicate with each other over multiple CANBUS networks with high speed two way information flows.
If you want to access vehicle data and more specifically driving information, then you need to tap into the appropriate bus and filter the messages for the ones you are interested in....