Instrument Cluster Driver Information Display Database and Viewer Tool

Instrument Clusters have grown increasingly complex in the last decade to include multi-character displays as standard features. Automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) all too often leave the types of messages displayed in their Instrument Cluster’s up to the component suppliers, this accounts for huge overhead costs in software design, text string translations, validation, and maintenance. This paper presents a design of a database for an Automotive OEM’s Instrument Cluster Driver Information Display as well as a tool for viewing the database and validation. This paper focuses on allowing an OEM to design its own database in house using inexpensive tooling to avoid the costly overhead of having a component supplier design the database in addition to designing the software to run the Instrument Cluster.