Accessory power and data bus

[revnelson]

There is clearly a wiring connection between various accessory connection points and the mounting point of the Five Switch in the cab. There also must be a data bus for functionality like lights changing depending on park/running/turning/etc. I'm hoping this will all be standardized, documented, and open. I would love to mount a small ESP32 in my own accessories that can use that data to control my own lights or whatever else. Also interested to see max current rating for the power lines at each of the connection ports.

 

[BCondrey]

An ESP32 or a Raspberry Pi would be ideal. Slam a USB/LTE stick on it and you have a internet connection for whatever.

 

[revnelson]

Yeah, ideally I could embed an ESP32 into the 3D printed housing of each accessory itself and potentially use a Pi as a central brain in the dash area.

Bonus points if we could tap into the telemetry of the Slate module for LTE access. A boy can dream, at least...

 

[r6tn]

You might look at the Crowpanel rotary encoder/1.28in display. I flirted with one but my skills weren't good enough to accomplish what I wanted so I ended up taking it out

 

[revnelson]

I flirted with one but my skills weren't good enough to accomplish what I wanted so I ended up taking it out

Was it a software/configuration issue? If so I may be able to help you out from here. If it's hardware related, not as easy to assist over the web but I still might be able to give you some pointers of a good direction to head in.

 

[r6tn]

Go on ….

Was it a software/configuration issue? If so I may be able to help you out from here. If it's hardware related, not as easy to assist over the web but I still might be able to give you some pointers of a good direction to head in.

I appreciate it but I don't even remember. Whatever I was doing I found another way and shelved it entirely

 

[Big Bud]

Bonus points if we could tap into the telemetry of the Slate module for LTE access. A boy can dream, at least...

There may be other options than Slate Telemetry unit. I could see a great opportunity to use OVMS by Open Vehicles, an open-source solution if one is inclined to tinker in the Telematics space.

 

[pauly]

An ESP32 or a Raspberry Pi would be ideal. Slam a USB/LTE stick on it and you have a internet connection for whatever.

Slate is like the Graphene OS of trucks 😜

 

[kvermeer]

There is clearly a wiring connection between various accessory connection points and the mounting point of the Five Switch in the cab. There also must be a data bus for functionality like lights changing depending on park/running/turning/etc. I'm hoping this will all be standardized, documented, and open. I would love to mount a small ESP32 in my own accessories that can use that data to control my own lights or whatever else. Also interested to see max current rating for the power lines at each of the connection ports.

I also think it would be cool to have a remappable fieldbus that interfaced with the Five Switch and accessory points: Put a digital output module in the fuse box, plug in your phone and load up the Slate app, and tell the computer what switches control what outputs: Switch 1 is for the fog lamps, so energize the output for the accessory point behind the front bumper, but they should be disabled when the headlamps are off (a configurable output on the vehicle bus could do cool stuff like that!). Switch 2 is for the Diode Dynamics bed lighting kit, so use that to toggle on the left rear accessory connection point and also the right rear accessory connection point, and so on. The switch panel just needs a microcontroller with a CAN transciever and 12V, and each of the accessory points just need a microcontroller with a CAN transciever and output transistor, instead of stringing a dozen multicolored wires under the dash and pulling wires from there and from all the accessory points to a junction box that can be physically connected in a hundred different ways.

However, that sounds like costly Rivian fancy tech, not simple Slate tech. I expect something more like a switch panel of old: They'll give us a length of wire with the accessory, and a sealed grommet through the firewall, if you want the switches to do anything anywhere you need to pull wire through the truck from A to B.

If you want your ESP32 to talk to the vehicle bus, I expect that's going to be CAN bus. Not sure how many busses or if any are encrypted (I hope not) or whether they're traditional CAN 2.0, CAN-FD, CAN-XL, or something low-end like LIN or fancy like 10BASE-T1S automotive Ethernet, but I don't expect a whole lot of high-speed vision/ADAS data running around the Slate. Most of what you want will be on the OBD-II port.