http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/ Sun, 17 May 2026 17:49:30 +0000 MyBB http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=11396 Tue, 23 Jun 2020 18:53:43 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=11396
I downloaded the corresponding app and am running my new “glass dash” on a spare iPad. It verifies my suspicions (and in some cases, hopes) that some of my analog gauges were reporting incorrect readings. In that sense, it’s reassuring to be viewing better information on the engine and tranny. Plus it’s interesting to see the instantaneous mpg figures when going downhill! I hit a high of 340 mpg at one point! Yeah, that didn’t last long.

FYI, they have recently substantially reduced the price on these things. Plus if you use coupon code of “Amazon” they take even more off. My only negative comment is that there doesn’t seem to be much for direct customer support, except through an online forum of Q&A postings.

But all in all, I have found it to be a very useful tool to add to your bus.]]>
I downloaded the corresponding app and am running my new “glass dash” on a spare iPad. It verifies my suspicions (and in some cases, hopes) that some of my analog gauges were reporting incorrect readings. In that sense, it’s reassuring to be viewing better information on the engine and tranny. Plus it’s interesting to see the instantaneous mpg figures when going downhill! I hit a high of 340 mpg at one point! Yeah, that didn’t last long.

FYI, they have recently substantially reduced the price on these things. Plus if you use coupon code of “Amazon” they take even more off. My only negative comment is that there doesn’t seem to be much for direct customer support, except through an online forum of Q&A postings.

But all in all, I have found it to be a very useful tool to add to your bus.]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=10936 Mon, 06 Mar 2017 19:06:26 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=10936 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=10664 Mon, 08 Feb 2016 19:16:18 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=10664 John]]> John]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=10104 Fri, 06 Dec 2013 01:35:58 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=10104
Thanks!!]]>
Thanks!!]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9946 Tue, 13 Aug 2013 05:36:53 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9946
My current 2000 LXi has only one air gauge for monitoring both front and back and one tag air gauge.

My prior LXi had a tag dump switch and a suspension dump switch.
My current LXi has no tag dump switch and only a suspension dump switch.

I'm guessing my current bus was an earlier model than my prior bus as I don't remember the build date on my prior bus?

This would indicate to me that the air system design was changed sometime in the 2000 year models. I wonder why BB made the change?

Anyone know?]]>
My current 2000 LXi has only one air gauge for monitoring both front and back and one tag air gauge.

My prior LXi had a tag dump switch and a suspension dump switch.
My current LXi has no tag dump switch and only a suspension dump switch.

I'm guessing my current bus was an earlier model than my prior bus as I don't remember the build date on my prior bus?

This would indicate to me that the air system design was changed sometime in the 2000 year models. I wonder why BB made the change?

Anyone know?]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9833 Sat, 01 Jun 2013 16:33:29 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9833
Scroll up to vote in the Poll.]]>
Scroll up to vote in the Poll.]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9813 Tue, 21 May 2013 23:06:41 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9813
The Digitel system was a really cool voice chip system on the late 70s-early 80s Birds (I don't know exactly how many years it spanned; perhaps Ralph can jump in here with some clarification). I believe (from memory, so cut me some slack here!) that it may have been from PMMI, the same folks that did the musical horns. Basically, in addition to time and temperature, it was tied into many of the bus systems and it actually spoke to you to warn you about various items on the Bird. It reminded us of the robot on Lost in Space, and we referred to it as "The Little Man" (as in turn the Little Man on or off). The main switch was in the dinette control panel.

The first time the Little Man spoke to me was after about a week of ownership. We had gone down to Mustang Island (aka Upper Padre Island) for a weekend. We had just started up and over a really steep and really narrow ship channel bridge. As a new owner, the lanes seemed like they were only about 9 feet wide with a concrete railing right on the line on either side. Well, about halfway up this bridge, out of no where, in the speaker above my head comes this "WARNING! There is water in the fuel! Please stop and rectify." And, he usually repeated everything he said twice, just so you would not miss it! Well, I did manage not to hit anything, but I nearly ruined the seat covering. Needless to say I stopped as soon as I got off the bridge and ran for the blue box. Turns out, the Little Man was wired into the sensor in the sump in the fuel tank, the one that turns on the water in the fuel light on the dash. As we went upward, the water that had settled in that sump went back to touch the sensor and the Little Man was there to warn me, even before the light on the dash went on. Scared me silly. Turned out there was about 4-6 ounces of water in the fuel sump when I figured out what to do next and drained it. A little sensitive, but useful information nonetheless.

Mostly, we kept the Little Man turned off, because our 83 was built during the 55mph speed limit, so in today's 70 or more speed limits, it was kind of annoying, albeit pretty funny. As soon as you got past 60mph, he came on in the speaker over the driver with a gentle "Warning, you are exceeding the speed limit". A little after 65, it was more of a "WARNING! You are exceeding the speed limit, please slow down". Once you crossed 70, he got downright apoplectic and started screaming at you "WARNING! YOU ARE EXCEEDING THE SPEED LIMIT. SLOW DOWN IMMEDIATELY!" I couldn't get much past 72mph in the 83, so I don't know if he started crying for help at 75 or 80, or if he just sulked. It was pretty funny how they seemingly had programmed in a personality.

"He" also helped identify annoying warning buzzers. I was going down the road and this annoying warning buzzer would start growling and then stop. There were no dash warning lights on. After about 100+ miles of that, we stopped and the first words were "Turn the Little Man on please". In about 20 seconds, here he comes with a nice "Please check leveling jacks." I looked down at the levers. They were all in neutral and no leveling lights were on, so I scoffed, but hit the levers to retract anyway. As soon as I touched the front drivers jack, I heard an immediate thunk. That jack must have slipped down on that rough road by a whopping quarter of an inch or so. Anyway, the Little Man was then happy, I was happy and we proceeded on without an annoying buzzer.

He also had a great "WARNING! Intruder Alert! Warning, Intruder Alert!", but that's a story for another time, if my wife will let me tell it! LOL

In summary, I am hoping David's SAN work can reproduce a new version of the Little Man. Maybe some of you guys with older coaches with a functioning Digitel can fill David in on some of the other features that this system monitored.

FWIW,

Mike Bulriss
1991 WB40 "Texas Minivan"
San Antonio, TX]]>
The Digitel system was a really cool voice chip system on the late 70s-early 80s Birds (I don't know exactly how many years it spanned; perhaps Ralph can jump in here with some clarification). I believe (from memory, so cut me some slack here!) that it may have been from PMMI, the same folks that did the musical horns. Basically, in addition to time and temperature, it was tied into many of the bus systems and it actually spoke to you to warn you about various items on the Bird. It reminded us of the robot on Lost in Space, and we referred to it as "The Little Man" (as in turn the Little Man on or off). The main switch was in the dinette control panel.

The first time the Little Man spoke to me was after about a week of ownership. We had gone down to Mustang Island (aka Upper Padre Island) for a weekend. We had just started up and over a really steep and really narrow ship channel bridge. As a new owner, the lanes seemed like they were only about 9 feet wide with a concrete railing right on the line on either side. Well, about halfway up this bridge, out of no where, in the speaker above my head comes this "WARNING! There is water in the fuel! Please stop and rectify." And, he usually repeated everything he said twice, just so you would not miss it! Well, I did manage not to hit anything, but I nearly ruined the seat covering. Needless to say I stopped as soon as I got off the bridge and ran for the blue box. Turns out, the Little Man was wired into the sensor in the sump in the fuel tank, the one that turns on the water in the fuel light on the dash. As we went upward, the water that had settled in that sump went back to touch the sensor and the Little Man was there to warn me, even before the light on the dash went on. Scared me silly. Turned out there was about 4-6 ounces of water in the fuel sump when I figured out what to do next and drained it. A little sensitive, but useful information nonetheless.

Mostly, we kept the Little Man turned off, because our 83 was built during the 55mph speed limit, so in today's 70 or more speed limits, it was kind of annoying, albeit pretty funny. As soon as you got past 60mph, he came on in the speaker over the driver with a gentle "Warning, you are exceeding the speed limit". A little after 65, it was more of a "WARNING! You are exceeding the speed limit, please slow down". Once you crossed 70, he got downright apoplectic and started screaming at you "WARNING! YOU ARE EXCEEDING THE SPEED LIMIT. SLOW DOWN IMMEDIATELY!" I couldn't get much past 72mph in the 83, so I don't know if he started crying for help at 75 or 80, or if he just sulked. It was pretty funny how they seemingly had programmed in a personality.

"He" also helped identify annoying warning buzzers. I was going down the road and this annoying warning buzzer would start growling and then stop. There were no dash warning lights on. After about 100+ miles of that, we stopped and the first words were "Turn the Little Man on please". In about 20 seconds, here he comes with a nice "Please check leveling jacks." I looked down at the levers. They were all in neutral and no leveling lights were on, so I scoffed, but hit the levers to retract anyway. As soon as I touched the front drivers jack, I heard an immediate thunk. That jack must have slipped down on that rough road by a whopping quarter of an inch or so. Anyway, the Little Man was then happy, I was happy and we proceeded on without an annoying buzzer.

He also had a great "WARNING! Intruder Alert! Warning, Intruder Alert!", but that's a story for another time, if my wife will let me tell it! LOL

In summary, I am hoping David's SAN work can reproduce a new version of the Little Man. Maybe some of you guys with older coaches with a functioning Digitel can fill David in on some of the other features that this system monitored.

FWIW,

Mike Bulriss
1991 WB40 "Texas Minivan"
San Antonio, TX]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9770 Sat, 04 May 2013 15:19:28 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9770
For the time being I'm going to set configuring WaGu aside so I can get back to our Sensor Area Network.

I'd like your opinion on a few things.

First, I think scattering arduinos throughout the bus may not be the best solution. Too many arduinos creates too many points of failure. Plus I'm not convinced the arduino with it's associated sensor hardware is up to the commercial/industrial environments our bus SAN requires. Also, the arduino doesn't seem to have the computing power required forcing us to eventually hang them off a Rasberry Pi or some other full purpose high-power computing environment.

To solve some of these issues I started to look around at what the robotics world and the automated factory world is using.

I stumbled across an interesting architecture pioneered by a gentleman named Saul Greenberg from the University of Calgary, Wiki.

His architecture may suit our needs better. Basically he takes a bunch of sensors, aggregates them, and connects them to a computing platform via USB. The computing platform can be any type of machine running a host of real operating systems. It can even be a Rasberry Pi. The rPi can be located anywhere and is powerful enough to communicate via the full TCP/IP stack with any other host, local or remote. This means ostensibly you could control your bus with your iPad (over iOS) from your homebase living room sofa, many miles away.

The idea would be a set of sensors implemented using Phidgets connected to a rPi communicating wirelessly to a GUI somewhere (iPhone, iPad, Android, Laptop, Dashtop).

Check out these links: Phidgets, Robotshop, DSP Robotics, Linux Support.]]>
For the time being I'm going to set configuring WaGu aside so I can get back to our Sensor Area Network.

I'd like your opinion on a few things.

First, I think scattering arduinos throughout the bus may not be the best solution. Too many arduinos creates too many points of failure. Plus I'm not convinced the arduino with it's associated sensor hardware is up to the commercial/industrial environments our bus SAN requires. Also, the arduino doesn't seem to have the computing power required forcing us to eventually hang them off a Rasberry Pi or some other full purpose high-power computing environment.

To solve some of these issues I started to look around at what the robotics world and the automated factory world is using.

I stumbled across an interesting architecture pioneered by a gentleman named Saul Greenberg from the University of Calgary, Wiki.

His architecture may suit our needs better. Basically he takes a bunch of sensors, aggregates them, and connects them to a computing platform via USB. The computing platform can be any type of machine running a host of real operating systems. It can even be a Rasberry Pi. The rPi can be located anywhere and is powerful enough to communicate via the full TCP/IP stack with any other host, local or remote. This means ostensibly you could control your bus with your iPad (over iOS) from your homebase living room sofa, many miles away.

The idea would be a set of sensors implemented using Phidgets connected to a rPi communicating wirelessly to a GUI somewhere (iPhone, iPad, Android, Laptop, Dashtop).

Check out these links: Phidgets, Robotshop, DSP Robotics, Linux Support.]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9731 Sat, 20 Apr 2013 20:55:21 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=9731
The Pro Driver on my 2003 LXI is inoperable and I am not sure if it is a Pro Driver problem, a wire problem between the unit and the diagnostic plug or a wire problem betwen the diagnostic plug and the engine ECU.

I have not taken the time to remove and diagnose the individual items. Both the Pro Driver and the diagnostic plug are very difficult to access. I have a wiring diagram for both the Pro Driver and the ECU to the diagnostic plug.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.]]>
The Pro Driver on my 2003 LXI is inoperable and I am not sure if it is a Pro Driver problem, a wire problem between the unit and the diagnostic plug or a wire problem betwen the diagnostic plug and the engine ECU.

I have not taken the time to remove and diagnose the individual items. Both the Pro Driver and the diagnostic plug are very difficult to access. I have a wiring diagram for both the Pro Driver and the ECU to the diagnostic plug.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=195 Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:11:27 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=195 http://digitaldiner.blogspot.fr/2012/10/...berry.html

Have fun

--Ned]]> http://digitaldiner.blogspot.fr/2012/10/...berry.html

Have fun

--Ned]]> http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=191 Tue, 26 Mar 2013 01:18:15 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=191 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=121 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:46:15 +0000 http://www.wanderlodgegurus.com/showthread.php?tid=121
Still, my WL has plenty of sensors and interesting places to collect information, including the usual things like coolant levels, temps, pressures, and so forth. It would be useful to break out and monitor the individual sensors that are currently aggregated into the "Check Engine" warning light. I know of a sensor on the leveling jacks, a sensor on the coolant tank on top of the engine radiator, and I assume there are more. Any of these will turn on the generic "Check engine" warning. I hate it when that happens, because I want it tell me which system the problem is in.

So I think about lashing up a short custom wiring harness to feed the data from sensors to an Arduino inside the coach. They have plenty enough processing power to log, filter, transform, and transmit a handful of raw data inputs for display. I'd probably try to send it wirelessly to dashboard area for display.

I've never used Arduino for wireless data transmission. I picked up an XBee shield thinking it was what I needed, but it needs the actual XBEE wireless radio component as an add-on. The XBee web site says this shield model is deprecated! So I am back at square one on that aspect of the project.

David mentioned once that he was thinking about an engine fan speed monitor, and I thought this sounded like a cool idea so I put together a prototype based on a bicycle speedometer and a few lines of code modified from a sample code I found on the web. It works perfectly as a counter--every time I wave the magnet near the sensor, the arduino reads it as a high value. When the magnet is out of range, the arduino reads it as "0". All that remains is finding a mounting place close enough to the Horton fan to pick up the magnet as it goes by, attached to a fan blade. Heh--an Arduino fan speed sensor!

I get carried away with the possibiiities. I know better, but under this hardcore veneer of 3208 "KISS" discipline, I am at heart a fully-instrumented kind of guy. I don't mind the uncertainty of taking the bus on the road with the prospect of mechanical problems at some point before returning home. But I would love to be able to see problems developing before they occur by keeping an eye on more aspects of critical systems and engine operating parameters. There's no particular reason why I couldn't monitor many more things than my coach in factory trim is equipped to do.

Is anyone else hacking the 3208/Arduino frontier? Care to share?

--Ned

Ned Bedinger
'91 SP36]]>
Still, my WL has plenty of sensors and interesting places to collect information, including the usual things like coolant levels, temps, pressures, and so forth. It would be useful to break out and monitor the individual sensors that are currently aggregated into the "Check Engine" warning light. I know of a sensor on the leveling jacks, a sensor on the coolant tank on top of the engine radiator, and I assume there are more. Any of these will turn on the generic "Check engine" warning. I hate it when that happens, because I want it tell me which system the problem is in.

So I think about lashing up a short custom wiring harness to feed the data from sensors to an Arduino inside the coach. They have plenty enough processing power to log, filter, transform, and transmit a handful of raw data inputs for display. I'd probably try to send it wirelessly to dashboard area for display.

I've never used Arduino for wireless data transmission. I picked up an XBee shield thinking it was what I needed, but it needs the actual XBEE wireless radio component as an add-on. The XBee web site says this shield model is deprecated! So I am back at square one on that aspect of the project.

David mentioned once that he was thinking about an engine fan speed monitor, and I thought this sounded like a cool idea so I put together a prototype based on a bicycle speedometer and a few lines of code modified from a sample code I found on the web. It works perfectly as a counter--every time I wave the magnet near the sensor, the arduino reads it as a high value. When the magnet is out of range, the arduino reads it as "0". All that remains is finding a mounting place close enough to the Horton fan to pick up the magnet as it goes by, attached to a fan blade. Heh--an Arduino fan speed sensor!

I get carried away with the possibiiities. I know better, but under this hardcore veneer of 3208 "KISS" discipline, I am at heart a fully-instrumented kind of guy. I don't mind the uncertainty of taking the bus on the road with the prospect of mechanical problems at some point before returning home. But I would love to be able to see problems developing before they occur by keeping an eye on more aspects of critical systems and engine operating parameters. There's no particular reason why I couldn't monitor many more things than my coach in factory trim is equipped to do.

Is anyone else hacking the 3208/Arduino frontier? Care to share?

--Ned

Ned Bedinger
'91 SP36]]>