- Today we are unboxing this AEM CD7 Dash.
It's got all the features you'd expect from a motorsport
level data logger plus it interfaces to almost every ECU
on the market.
Including the one that's probably in your factory vehicle.
Oh and you might have noticed, not Andre,
I'm Zach, the new wiring guy here at HPA.
Let's get into this thing.
It's a seven inch, full colour dash display with intergrated
buttons and warning LEDs.
The screen is readable in direct sunlight,
has an anti glare coating,
and the housing has an integrated shade hood.
They offer the dash in four spec levels,
they're all the same seven inch form factor and housing,
but you can get it with or without an optional
logging package and with or without an optional
vehicle dynamics and GPS track mapping package.
The unit they've sent us here is the top of the line one,
so it has both the GPS track mapping options,
and vehicle dynamics.
AEM is aiming at an interesting spot in the market
with this dash.
They've made the decision to not include any direct
sensor interfaces on the device,
but only read data received on either
of its two CAN bus ports.
This might actually seem like a bit of a limitation
but I think it actually makes quite a lot of sense.
Most of the vehicles this dash will be installed in,
are going to have one or more ECUs already reading
all the required sensor data.
That data can then be sent via CAN bus to the dash
where it's displayed to the driver.
Or if you've purchased the option, logged.
The two CAN bus ports are independently confiurable
for transmission speed, meaning you can read data
from a one megabit bus,
most common on other performance automotive electronics.
But also interfaced to an OBD2 500 kilobit bus
in a factory vehicle at the same time.
AEM have made a major push here to make
the CD7 able to read data from any other device
on the CAN bus network,
and not be locked into their specific data format.
They supply literally hundreds of predefined
CAN bus data templates for other automotive
electronic devices,
along with allowing you to completely customise
input data channels and how they're received.
This is really great to see and reflects the way a lot
of the players in the aftermarket performance
industry are going.
Also worth noting is that AEM has optional
CAN termination resistors on both channels
and for this I say a massive thank you.
When you're wiring in a device to a CAN bus network
it can be a real struggle to try and obey all the protocol
standards.
If every device had switchable termination resistors,
this job would be much easier.
Ah, printed documentation,
I love getting printed documentation.
I love being able to download it too,
but when you're out next to the car,
and your laptop battery's flat,
this can be really handy.
We can see the dash comes packaged in nicely cut foam,
so it's pretty tight in there and should survive transport
anywhere in the world unscathed.
Cards on the table, we have actually had this box open
before as we needed to take some promotional shots.
But the dash was originally supplied with a protective
film over the screen.
So if you particularly like to remove those,
as I do, you're not gonna miss out.
The dash has a satisfyingly chunky construction.
It's got a little bit of heft to it,
but not really unreasonably so.
It looks like a die-cast metal case with a black textured
powder coated finish so that's very race car.
It is rated to IP65 sealing,
so while it's not submersible,
it is fine to install in a boat or a UTV
where it might get splashed or a little bit muddy.
The buttons on the side are a textured rubber
and they're pleasingly tactile so you should
be able to reliably press them,
even if you've got racing gloves on.
The one on the right here does feel slightly squishier
than the one on the left,
but I suspect that'll come right with a bit of use.
The shift LEDs are located above the screen here,
and we've got a warning LED on the left
and an alarm LED on the right.
The colours of these LEDs are fixed.
So the shift LEDs come up in a two green, two yellow,
three blue arrangement.
The warning LED is yellow, and the alarm LED is red.
Would've been nice to see AEM use RGB LEDs here
so we could configure the colours for our application,
but they have let us configure the brightness
of all the LEDs and they've put nice diffused lenses on them
so you should be able to see them easily without them
being too glarey.
On the back of the device we have four isolated
rubber mounts.
The template for which is available in the documentation
or downloadable from AEM's website.
So you can make sure you get your mounting spot on.
We have a mini USB connector for configuration
and logging download.
And a DTM12 connector for power supply connections
and CAN bus connections.
I do like to see a DTM12 connector here,
because although we all love an autosport connector,
they are really pricey.
The DTM12 is easily and cheaply available,
they're reliable, they're easy to pin,
and you can get bootable versions,
if you need that extra bit of sealing,
if you're installing it into a boat or UTV for example.
So the other bits and pieces in the box,
first up here we've got the DTM12 connector,
which AEM have broken up into their AEM
net four pin pin out for us,
so that's power ground and CAN high and CAN low.
They've also broken out the second CAN bus connection
to a DTM2 connector for us.
There's also a couple of flying leads coming out
of this 12 pin connector.
One of which is for putting the dash into night mode,
which is another array of brightness settings
that you can configure.
The other is for lap beacon timing.
So you can do lap timing with the dash,
even if you don't have the GPS options.
Next cable we've got here is AEM's four pin pin out.
But broken up into flying leads for power and ground.
When I first looked at this cable,
I though oh it's a bit cheap of them to use tape
on the ends but I think they've just done that
for packaging to keep it all together.
Because you can unravel this and you can run
the other two wires through it,
if you do choose to use them.
When this gets installed in the vehicle I would probably
end up trimming it to length and sealing
that off with a bit of glue heat shrink.
We've got a standard USB mini cable.
And because we've got the optional logging package,
they've included a USB extension cable.
So this breaks out the USB mini plug,
on the back of the device to a flush mount USB mini plug.
This means if you install the dash in a location
where the USB interface was a little bit tricky to get to,
you can install this cable,
and extend it out to somewhere that's much
easier to access 'cause you'll probably be accessing
it quite a lot, downloading logs for example.
Ah this is a really cool piece of gear.
It's the optional VDM or vehicle dynamics module.
It's a three axis gyrometer, three axis accelerometer,
and GPS unit,
all built into one pretty tidy little package.
It gives you information as to the pitch,
roll and yaw of the vehicle,
along with acceleration data along the car's three axis,
so that's front to back, side to side, and up and down.
This data's pretty critical when you're trying to dial in
your suspension setup and then of course
for verifying any changes you've
made to a suspension set up.
It's also a GPS module, so it gives you real time
track mapping and position data,
which is really really handy when you're looking
at that accelerometer and gyroscope data,
because you can tell exactly what corner the car was in
at the time.
They've broken the wiring out into the AEM net pin out,
and given you both a male and a female connector,
which is great because it'll make it really easy
to interface into any part of the wiring harness
in the vehicle.
The unit has a status LED that gives you information
as to the current GPS signal lock.
The mounting of these units does need to be
reasonably specific.
You need to have them as close to the centre
of the vehicle as possible for your gyroscope data
to be accurate and you really need to have them mounted
face up and in line with the axis of the vehicle,
so this arrow pointing towards the front of the car,
for your accelerometer data to be valid.
There is a little bit of flexibility
in the mounting position,
but the closer you can get it to the optimal position,
the better your data's gonna be.
There's also a GPS antenna with
a pretty good length of cable on it.
These are magnetic and go on the roof
or hood of the car.
Somewhere with a clear unobstructed view of the sky,
so they can get a good lock on GPS satellites.
If you've got a vehicle that has an aluminium hood
or roof, you can mount them using double sided tape.
If you've got a vehicle that's got a composite roof or hood,
things do get a little bit more complicated
as you do need to provide a metal
ground plane underneath them.
AEM recommend a circle of sheet metal
no less than five inches in diameter.
i found aluminium tape to actually be a pretty good solution
for this, it works quite well and it's removable
if you're ever changing the system to a different vehicle,
or removing the system from the vehicle all together.
And we've got some velcro.
This will be for mounting the VDM.
And because they've broken out the connectors
to nice common DTM four pins,
it'd be a pretty good way of mounting it
in an easily removable fashion,
so you could share it between vehicles.
If you were putting the VDM into another vehicle,
you wouldn't even need to have AEM electronics in there,
as they do provide data on VDM's CAN bus output format.
So interfacing it to any other automotive electronics
should be pretty easy.
That's all the physical stuff out of the way.
And I think AEM have done pretty well.
It's all robust, well documented, and easy to connect to.
What can make or break these systems though,
is the software interface.
AEM have developed a program called dash design
for configuring the display.
I haven't had enough time to really delve into its depths,
but skimming the surface has been pretty pleasant.
I was able to get the dash up and running
with one of their default templates,
displaying data from a Link G4 Plus ECU
in only a matter of minutes.
Their supplied CAN data template was pretty spot on,
just needing a few tweaks here and there
to the conversion side of things,
as we use a metric system here in New Zealand.
One of the first things I noticed is that the supplied
gauge templates are pretty comprehensive.
But if you want, you can completely configure
the display to your liking,
gauge design, position, text, colour,
background images,
it's all on the table for you to modify if you like.
I bet it would be a real rabbits nest to head down
designing a gauge setup completely from scratch,
but it would be pretty cool to have a display
you know is completely unique to your vehicle.
Or make it match the rest of the factory gauges
in the car for a nice integrated install.
Top points to AEM here for providing
that level of flexibility.
It's not an easy thing to do,
let alone be prepared to provide support for it
down the track.
The input data channel configuration seems to be just
as flexible too.
You can create new data channels easily,
name them as you like,
and completely define how they receive their data
from the CAN bus.
You can set up global conversion functions which can
be reused on any incoming data channel,
meaning you don't need to do the conversion manually
for each channel you create.
That being said, AEM have a massive library of CAN
data templates for popular aftermarket electronics,
so it would pay to have a quick browse of it
before you commit time to building your own.
Really the software side of things would need a complete
and pretty lengthy video in and of itself
to do it justice.
But so far I haven't stuck anything that I wanted to do,
that I couldn't find a way of doing.
AEM have had a pretty good balance of making
the dash easy to get up and running quickly,
but providing the flexibility to know you'll always
be able to accomodate any future modifications
to the vehicle.
There you have it, the AEM CD7 dash,
with optional logging and vehicle dynamics
package in this instance.
Overall, I'm impressed with the unit and I don't think
anyone purchasing this device
is gonna be disappointed.