Found out bad solder is a thing. Just had a section of solder wire go on and acts like lead free. Extra flux etc makes no difference, it looks like aluminium burrs even when heated. Problem was it is under the pads on a microcontroller and shorting ground to power. New solder and drowned in flux it just turns to sand like beads and won’t flow.    I tested some more of the roll and it has sections that don’t melt correctly and are matte without shine and do flow or stick to the tip of the iron. The 2-mm from the heated end looks matte and nasty as well.    Ordered new roll of solder so that is more delay. still have other cool things on the go so back to learning to code.

First boards turned up. waiting on the rest of the components to arrive so can test them.      

Painted some speakers.  Just tidying up some old high end speakers magnet mounts. Original paint flaking from that white oxidation or the alloy. Used some left over touch up paint, so colour matched to the car. 

Pretty much. The board and chip can read any can up to 1Mb/s speed what you do with it is open to how much coding you can do. The ESP32 that it’s based one has built in canbus support so it’s not as complex as it appears.   I’ll have some basic framework coding for it, along with the web config examples. That way there is no need for an app as the ESP32 can be a wifi access point and you connect to it, and it shows the settings. I have two prototypes running on the OEM stock canbus. One does rpm shiftlight the other is DCCD display. The tire pressure one hasn’t got off my desk yet as it has an annoying mounting system but it works, mostly. There is no discovery scan yet, you have to know the max addresses of the sensors. There is another bigger display that is popular CYD 2.8” with touch control for NZD$15-30 as well, that seems like it maybe a good idea to do as well. Power and canbus would be 1/4 to 1/3 that board the rest could be holes for whatever other electronics.  

So, these little gauges can hook into the CAN system and then ... read whatever? Clever! Another reason for me to get a Link..