VehicleGPS

Overview

VehicleGPS is a program written in Python that communicates with an u-blox GPS chip using the UBX protocol, and displays various data points. VehicleGPS can also communicate with a car using the OBD-II protocol and display data from the car's computer and its various sensors.

Screens structure

The main screen is divided into 2 main sections. Status bar and main view. The status bar is always visible. The main view is used for multiple views. For example the Gauge view or the Settings view.

Gauge view

Settings view

Hardware requirements

• Raspberry Pi Model B (2B, 3B, 3B+)
• SD card with Raspbian Stretch Lite installed
• Adafruit PiTFT 2.8"
• u-blox NEO-M8N GPS chip
• GNSS antenna

How to set up

Plug your SD card into your computer and add a file called ssh into the root directory.

Next plug your SD card into the Pi and turn it on.

Raspberry Pi Configuration

When the Pi has booted, run sudo raspi-config, go to Advanced Options and then Expand Filesystem.

Next go to Interfacing Options and select Serial. Then select No to Would you like a login shell to be accessible over serial? and Yes to Would you like the serial port hardware to be enabled?

PiTFT Screen Drivers

Install the drivers for the Adafruit PiTFT screen with these commands.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-Scripts/master/adafruit-pitft.sh
chmod +x adafruit-pitft.sh
sudo ./adafruit-pitft.sh

When running the adafruit-pitft.sh file select 3, 1, N, Y if you are using a capacitive screen.

Install Openbox and X11

Install a desktop environment to display the VehicleGPS program in.

sudo apt-get install xorg openbox

Install Python 3.6

The VehicleGPS code requires Python 3.6. To install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.5/Python-3.6.5.tar.xz
tar xf Python-3.6.5.tar.xz
cd Python-3.6.5
./configure
make
sudo make altinstall

These last three lines take a few minutes so be patient.

Then clean up the installation and remove unused files.

cd ..
sudo rm -r Python-3.6.5
rm Python-3.6.5.tar.xz
sudo apt-get --purge remove build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev

sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get clean

Then install packages required by the VehicleGPS program.

sudo pip3.6 install pyserial obd geopy RPi.GPIO dropbox python-tk

Edit file /boot/config.txt

Add this text to the bottom of the file:

enable_uart=1
dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt

dtoverlay=pitft28-capacitive,rotate=90,speed=32000000,fps=20
dtoverlay=pitft28-capacitive,touch-swapxy=true,touch-invx=true

Thanks to Pieter Hollants

Edit file .bashrc

Add this line to the file:

startx -- -nocursor

Edit file .xinitrc

Add these lines to the file:

xset -dpms s off
. /etc/X11/Xsession
exec openbox-session

Create the folder openbox and file autostart

Create the folder openbox in ~/.config/
Then create the file autostart in the openbox folder.
Add these lines to the autostart file:

nitrogen --restore &
sudo python3.6 /home/pi/VehicleGPS/src/main.py &

Install required font

Install a font that is used on the device with this command: sudo apt-get install ttf-freefont