Rewiring Club Car CRU LCD for custom screen display

[TYRAtlanta]

Our student team is building a custom car on the Club Car Cru base. we deconstructed and reconstructed it, but functionally it is the same model. We are using custom screens and want to remove and bypass the original LCD display so that we can replace it with a new one (using Arduino and raspberry pi) that is wired separately from the MCU.

We are on a tight deadline and any pointers on how to go about this or where to start our research will be much appreciated.

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[TheCartBoy]

Cool project, hope to see you post the progress.

CRU is a pretty new model, I've only seen 1, so safe to say fairly rare too.

Have you reached out to club car for a potential partnership program? I see your username is ATL, not too far from their headquarters in Evans.

[TYRAtlanta]

Unfortunately, we don't have too much time on our hands. We would've made a trip down to Evans if not for our deadline later this week.

We had someone work the electrical but we weren't able to figure out how to bypass the existing MCU and integrate the new display so the functions remain similar. If anyone has any resources, advice or tips, it would be of great help

[dap711]

Originally Posted by TYRAtlanta

We are using custom screens and want to remove and bypass the original LCD display so that we can replace it with a new one (using Arduino and raspberry pi) that is wired separately from the MCU.

I've never seen a Cru, but I do know the newer club car models use a CAN bus to communicate between controllers. They like to use a twisted pair cable with one blue wire and other white. I see you have a blue and white wire in your "old" connector. Is it twisted under the black tape? If so, then that is the CAN high and CAN low signal lines. I don't think you can bypass that communication and still have a working CAN network. If you had time, you could capture the data packets the VDU is broadcasting and try to duplicate them.

An alternative would be to replace the MCU with a non-CAN type. Most likely you have a Curtis Controller. I just went thru all this when I lost my Li-ion battery communication. I ripped out the whole network and started over with aftermarket products.

Thread here: https://www.buggiesgonewild.com/showthread.php?t=196922

[TheCartBoy]

I got a chuckle out of this. New Product Manager tells Engineering, I want a new screen on the car, I want Apple Car Play in it! The old screen is 7 inches, the new one is 7 inches, so go ahead and do it. This won't be that hard, you have 3 days! Of course the PM has no engineering background, did absolutely no research, and set an impossible deadline. 10/10 giving these students a real world experience!

[dap711]

Totally agree .. welcome to the real world. LOL