This shield was designed as part of an ongoing effort to modernize and retrofit an old FIAT Panda 141.

It consists of:

• A 11-20V switching power regulator for the main 5V power rail. This is the main source of power for all the electronics on the board.
• It acts as a power shield for a Raspberry PI or any SBC that supports its standard GPIO header format. It powers the underlying board through the 5V pins on the GPIO header. The 5V power regulation circuit is designed to sustain this kind of power + any eventual peripheral attached to the SBC such as a display.
• An STM32F103 for handling digital and analog IO coming from the car. The inputs are clamped from the variable battery supply voltage of the car at which light indicators and fuel sensors operate at to the standard 3.3v the MCU expects.
• An accelerometer for inertial data measurement, connected and managed by the STM32.

The STM32 orchestrates analog and digital IOs and communicates to the underlying SBC through an UART bus.

The main goal is to have the SBC drive a 1920x540 LCD for replacing the entirety of the analog cluster with a digital display, just like a modern car. It will be fitted with android auto integration, a standalone GPS and Map navigation system based on Open Street Map and much more.

Here attached the car in question: