[Coco] Re: Coco Digest, Vol 10, Issue 24

[Robert Emery]

> The idea of programming a VIC-20 for all this is plain scary! I don't know of
> anyone who really LIKED Commodore BASIC, though many tolerated it (or just
> didn't know any better).

What... it's only two commands, POKE and PRINT. ;-)


> I've seen the LED graph type gauges, but would
> rather have a numeric readout as it would be more accurate. LEDs in 5 mph
> steps would be good enough though. 
<snip>
> If the circuits you have drive LED characters I might be interested, but not
> interested LED bar graphs. Two digit display should be adequate, though I
> think I'd go with three for the speedo anyway. 

It's actually both. Their design featured three digit speedo, 4 digit tach
(ISTR both trailing zero's were hard-wired, it just counted 100's of RPM) and
each had a 20 LED bar graph starting at bottom left and rising to go across the
top of the digital readout. Vaguely like this:
   ______
  /
 /   888

I chose to make a custom layout that fit in the original speedo housing. I'll
post a pic. The VW speedo was about a 5" circle. I used the top half for speed
with 1" high green digits and added a third bar graph segment for 30 leds
(speedo only) with the option to set it to bar or single LED. For speed I used
triangular LEDs arranged in almost a full 180 degree arc, with a yellow LED
every 5 or 10 mph.

The tach was in the bottom half with 20 rectangular LEDs arranged similar to
the original design. I included a calculator LED display for the odometer
function and turn signal LEDs too, since they were also in the original speedo.

Bob


		
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