I recently bought an old Volvo 240 and want to add several gauges. Some are hard to find and there is also not too much room to mount without giving up some radio space. I am sure this type of thing has been beat to death at some point, but what I am thinking is a project to build a display that can be mounted in a small panel space about 3"X3" that will allow me to see a variety of parameters: oil pressure, oil temperature, outside ambient temperature, battery voltage, water temperature, transmission temperature, and maybe tach, ammeter. Scope would include finding, picking sendors and sensors and interfacing these inputs to a board with display output. Must be reasonably ruggedized for car app. Tach signal is already available, but unused in harnass. I really want to see all the data at once rather than scrolling through the data. Maybe just start with bars, but make sure to have the power to drive fancier display later. Each gauge could be handled seperately too, but not sure of pros and cons to big brain versus multiple discrete components.
Ideas are a bit vague now, but I could be satified with led bar graphs, not sure I need digits. Background is EE (power), but am interested in building knowledge base/experience with stamp, or pic, or something along those lines with idea of other projects. I started life with an electronics degree so I have built a few things, but it has been awhile. Not overly concerned with controller price (within reason) since it will be onesy type thing and I would like to have the computing power and I/O flexibility from the getgo. This is my first post hear so if this sounds crazy forgive me, I can always dream. Mainly looking for recommends for the brain, compiler, tools. Point me in a good direction work work too.