Anyone like the old-school speedometer on Slate?

[Visualvalhalla]

I'm flashing out a custom dashboard to be fitted into the center cubbyhole. I'd like your thoughts on this speedometer. Il pan to add State of charge and other informational status icons at the bottom

 

[wa6qmq]

yes but to me that's new old school prefer the older semicircle + a little more, not sure about the texture on the lower half but looks nice

 

[kvermeer]

I'm flashing out a custom dashboard to be fitted into the center cubbyhole. I'd like your thoughts on this speedometer. Il pan to add State of charge and other informational status icons at the bottom

I love the concept, but don't think it can really convey a classic look on an LCD screen.

I'd be much more inclined to get a set of physical servo gauges and drive them to show speed, range, and efficiency data off the CAN bus, something like these:

https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/putting-cheap-motorcycle-tachometers-to-work/

Those are cheap, but you can get nice ones too (or take the mechanism from an actual old car and replace the speedo cable with a hobby servo).

 

[Visualvalhalla]

I love the concept, but don't think it can really convey a classic look on an LCD screen.

I'd be much more inclined to get a set of physical servo gauges and drive them to show speed, range, and efficiency data off the CAN bus, something like these:

https://hackaday.com/2025/01/18/putting-cheap-motorcycle-tachometers-to-work/

Those are cheap, but you can get nice ones too (or take the mechanism from an actual old car and replace the speedo cable with a hobby servo).

oooo..those are cool!

 

[kvermeer]

oooo..those are cool!

Yep, there's a whole scene of motorheads building race cars and hot rods and heavily modified vehicles who want their own gauge clusters:

https://www.summitracing.com/search/part-type/gauges

Whatever you do, don't become completely ridiculous and try to make something totally custom like these guys:



Or if you do, just have the PCB manufactured professionally by a normal board house please, watching that episode gave me anxiety...

 

[cadblu]

That looks very GM to me How about emulating the greenish glow dash of a Fox body Mustang?

No disrespect to AZ Fox, of course

 

[adele]

I'm actually a fan of the digital speedometer. I wish there was a way to show kilometers though.

 

[Doctors Do Little]

That looks very GM to me How about emulating the greenish glow dash of a Fox body Mustang?

No disrespect to AZ Fox, of course

I got very strong flashbacks to my dad’s 1970 Chevy station wagon.

 

[Adam W]

Very cool look! A small detail that will help sell it: the red indicator usually rotated to match the angle of the white tick marks.

 

[E90400K]

Hate to tell you, but the forth coming Scout trucks are going to have a similar speedometer.

 

[Doctors Do Little]

Hate to tell you, but the forth coming Scout trucks are going to have a similar speedometer.

I am here for the Scout, too. Bring it. For a while I was on both the Lightning and Slate forums. Not sure if I want to enter the Scout forums just yet.

 

[gnarly180]

That looks good, a bit too old school for me though, a little before my time.

I hope Slate allows for changing the speedometer style like you can change the clock face on a smart watch. I really don't like the digital speedometers, they don't play nicely with my dyslexia. So I would like to set it to an analog speedometer if I can. I really liked the speedometer on my '07 Fit, the blue backlight was nice.

Keep up the good work.

 

[StromSpeed]

I'm flashing out a custom dashboard to be fitted into the center cubbyhole. I'd like your thoughts on this speedometer. Il pan to add State of charge and other informational status icons at the bottom

Love it!! 🙌🏼

 

[bartflossom]

Loved the early 60's thermometer speedometers. Best bud had a 59 dodge with it. The bar would be green to 35, orange to 64, and red over that. It was basically a barrel with the colors on it that was viewed through a slit as it slowly rotated farther with more speed. I think dashboard style peaked with the early 60's T-birds.

 

[Kopsis]

I hope Slate allows for changing the speedometer style like you can change the clock face on a smart watch.

I sincerely hope not. Assuming federal automotive regulations would even allow it, this kind of thing is a breeding ground for cost-creep and software bugs. Apple/Google/Samsung smartwatches have UI teams bigger than Slate's entire engineering department and still spend multiple product generations trying to get this kind of stuff right.

If you want your own UI, slap a tablet on the dash and go crazy. But I really want Slate to keep the built-in stuff as bulletproof as possible.