[rescue] LCD monitor diagnosis

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, Don Y wrote:

> The other day I mused that the car should be able to do this *for* us.
> After all, it knows how many miles it has traveled.  Just type in the
> number of gallons consumed (or, with accurate metering of the
> injectors, let it figure that out as well!).
>
> But, I quickly realized the folly of such a "mileage computer"...  an
> infrequently used device (thus subject to user's forgetting HOW to use
> it) and it's "controls" dont fit, intuitively, within the existing
> complement of dashboard controls in a car.

My Dodge truck has a feature like this.  Its user interface is
refreshingly minimal (A "US/Metric" button, a "Reset" button, and a pair
of buttons to move between other[0] similar statistics), and it's
integrated into the overhead light housing, which would otherwise be
wasted space.  I've checked the fuel economy measurement against my own
arithmetic enough to simply rely on it being accurate.

Even my grandmother's 1984 Mercury had such a device, although it had a
significantly more complicated UI due to poor planning and the
integration of a clock (so you have to set/adjust things rather than
just reset them to some baseline).  It had four modes (clock,
chronometer, fuel economy, and trip odometer), each of which required
slightly different interaction.


[0] Chronometer, second trip[1] odometer, compass, exterior thermometer.
[1] I use the one on the dash as a trip odometer and the one overhead as
     an oil-change reminder.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Humans that lose the capacity to think become
Elgin, TX          (    creatures whose existence has no value."
USA                 )                      --Schwarzwald, _The_Big_O_