Digital Workshop

A frend of mine and myself have placed a 7" touch screen into the center console of a Suzuki 4x4 and are presently programming some interesting features into the system.

So far, weve managed ( using Opus 6.0 ) to create a nice custom "feel" for a digital clock, a CD player, an MP3 player, and DVD player, as well as blu-tooth for an intergrated cellphone, & wireless network connection to the net while on the road - all intergrated into the one package.

What we WANT to do, is to be able to include things like diagnostic feedback from the car itself, - things like, the Battery, change the fan speed on the heater, create a temp sensor and alike.

Im thinking, using the joystick movement option in Opus, would it be possible to have that function detect "pulses" from some kind of sensor connected to the part of the car we wish to display? - say, the temp of the car could be read by ( something ) then converted to either a number or whatever, and then Opus could use the joystick control as a sort of INPUT device for the software to calculate from.

Also, are there any "limits" to the amount of joystick actions that can be used in a project like this?

Apart fro mthe 7'' touch screen, were using an old 2.6gig laptop with XP Pro installed.

Any thoughts fellas?

Rick

How many 'joysticks' are you going to run? Curious. Put one on the roof for 'low-hanging tree branches'.

Some ideas (other than joystick).
Take a look at Phidgets...
http://www.redferret.net/?p=8743
http://www.phidgets.com

Also, do a search on: USB sensor
You'll come up with things from TI, and various resources for applications.... accelerometers, vibration, density of bug strikes...

If not 'real-time' interface to Opus... once data is captured, shouldn't take much for Opus to read from files, DB.