Vehicle Dashboard - Electric Vehicle Instrument Cluster Design

CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT

Customer : An eMobility company in the field of after-sales electrification of commercial vehicles
Size : 51-200
Project vertical : Automotive eMobility
Challenge : Design and develop a vehicle dashboard that is replacable with OEM-fit instrument cluster
Solution : RH850 D1M1A based Electric vehicle instrument cluster
Services Availed :  Turnkey Product Engineering Services, Embedded Software, Embedded Hardware, UI/UX design, Mechanical
Tools and Technologies :
  • MCU: RH850 D1M1A
  • Programming Languages: C and Assembly
  • Hardware Design Tools: OrCAD Cadence
  • Software Development: GHS Multi-IDE and Compiler, Flint IDE
  • Frameworks: Sparklet and RAPIDSEA
  • UX: Adobe, GIMP

INTRODUCTION

Introduced through our distribution partner, this company is an eMobility Company with a specialization in commercial fleet electrification. Based out of Arizona, USA, they do after-sales electrification of commercial vehicles and their power train along with vehicle customization services. As a part of their offering, they were looking for a vehicle dashboard to show various parameters of the vehicle along with the value being added by their electrification services.

They approached Embien to develop an after-sales vehicle dashboard that can be used to replace the original company-fit instrument cluster. The entire electric vehicle instrument cluster design must be compliant with regulations and able to show the vehicle parameters with rich visualization.

CHALLENGE

The electric vehicle instrument cluster had to be in the same size as the current OEM-fit vehicle in the cluster such that the newer one can be simply swapped in the same location without affecting other components. Also, all the critical information already available in the original cluster for user access should be there with additional information for the electrification part. Some of the cluster interactions with the vehicle over CAN In Vehicle Network were un-documented and to be supported along with the regulatory compliance requirements.

SOLUTION

Being a turnkey development, all the relevant teams - embedded hardware, embedded software, UI/UX and mechanical design teams started working in parallel. With our Project Manager as the focal point, peers at the customer end were identified and tight collaboration established.

Hardware design

The Embedded Hardware design team understood and analyzed the vehicle interface requirements. After due-diligence, it was proposed that the new system can be a 10” TFT cluster design powered by Renesas RH850-D1M1A MCU. Necessary memory and communication interfaces were provisioned, and design done using OrCAD tools. Another advantage with this approach was to use our eStorm-C2 Automotive Instrument Cluster reference platform for software development till the final target is ready.


EV Instrument Cluster Architecture

Mechanical design

Our Mechanical designers created multiple models, explored placements, and zeroed in on the exact form factor of the electric vehicle instrument cluster. Mechanical provisions were provided in a way that the new design is simply replaceable at the same place of the OEM-fit cluster with minimal visual impact. Rapid 3D printing of the enclosure was done to validate the approach.

UI/UX Design

The UI/UX team also designed the vehicle dashboard screens in accordance with the usability, clarity, UI Appeal, brand identity, and regulatory compliance needs. The designs and interactions were designed and finalized after many rounds of brainstorming and discussions.

Firmware Development

From the firmware side, as a one-to-one replacement is being planned, the first step was to understand how the present cluster is working and communicating on the CAN bus. We collected the data packets over the vehicle network and started preparing the CAN DBC file for the packets of interest. Since the development was based on our eStorm-C2 Instrument Cluster kit, the capabilities of our Sparklet Embedded GUI library, RAPIDSEA libraries and Flint IDE are leveraged.


EV Instrument Cluster Firmware Development Process

System Configuration

Using the Flint System Configurator the entire system including the peripheral functionality, bootloader partitioning, protocol mapping was done. The CAN DBC was directly imported to the Configurator and mapped to the data variable created. Some of the custom logic and glue interfaces were created using the Flint Visual Programmer. With this, the entire application logic could be developed in a low-code development environment with minimal effort.

Then based on the UI designed, graphical assets were extracted and imported to the Flint UI Designer. Screen transitions and animations were created to ensure a smooth flow. The data variables were mapped to relevant UI widgets such that any change in them was reflected immediately on the screen. Settings options were given for the user to customize the cluster based on his preferences. Other add on features like Firmware Update over UDS were provided to enable system update at the service centers.

Accomplishment

With the initial development done on our eStorm-C1 Instrument Cluster reference platform, once the final board was available and bring-up done, the entire design was ported on to it with minimal changes. The entire product was thoroughly validated by our Quality Assurance team and found to be satisfactory after a few iterations. Then the cluster was delivered to the customer for vehicle validation. Some of the feedback received was incorporated and updated. After a limited roll out and end-user validation, finally the electric vehicle instrument cluster was rolled out to the field after production.

BENEFITS

One major benefit Embien was able to provide to the customer was to support the entire vehicle dashboard development in a short amount of time by leveraging low-code development with our vast array of ready-to-use products and solutions.

  • eStorm-C2 automotive instrument cluster development kit
  • Flint System Configurator for Protocols and system configuration
  • Flint Visual Programmer for logic development
  • Flint UI designer for screen and HMI development
  • RAPIDSEA for entire CAN IVN and UDS protocol stacks
  • Sparklet for Graphical Interface

Along with this, our expertise on Automotive development and EMS ecosystem partnership helped productize the electric vehicle instrument cluster design quickly and deploy in the field within a few months of time.

CONCLUSION

Thus, Embien’s Turnkey Product development services team was able to design and develop the complete electric vehicle instrument cluster in a short span of time leveraging our automotive domain and technological expertise. This is just one of the many such use cases where our customers benefited in their product realization process.

Want to develop a custom vehicle dashboard for your EV or ICE vehicle in compliance with regulations?
Leverage our Turnkey Product development services for your electric vehicle instrument cluster design