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This article is part of an archived collection from Nikolay Shishkov's blog about first-generation electric vehicles, battery maintenance, modifications, and repairs. Nikolay was an EV pioneer who passed away in 2025. His technical knowledge and generous sharing of information continues to help the EV community.

What hardware do you need for Think EV Monitor for the new generation of Thinks

By Nikolay Shishkov • January 11, 2015

nikometerThink A306think evThink EV Monitor

Think EV Monitor for the new gen Think is a program written in BASIC that runs on a Duinomite Mega board. The Duinomite Mega is (was?) the only duinomite/maximite that had CAN Bus available.

The output of the program can be displayed on any screen that supports composite video input. This can be a cheap "reverse camera" screen from ebay, or the a car stereo with built-in screen that supports composite input.
I use both 3.5" and 4.3" flip up screens and can recommend the 4.3" one - the 3.5" is a little too small...
The flipping is very useful and looks like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-Foldable-Digital-TFT-LCD-Screen-Car-Rearview-Reverse-Monitor-for-Camera-DVD-/271345323760?pt=AU_Car_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3f2d710ef0&vxp=mtr

Here is the duinomite board:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/Duinomite/DUINOMITE-MEGA/open-source-hardware

The duinomite can be bought also at mouser.com and some other of the major distributors.

Apart from the duinomite board and the screen, I also got the following items:
- a box for the duinomite board,
- a power cable with jack to power the duinomite
- an OBD connector with cable - it was easier to have the cable with the connector - so I could connect the power to the screen and the duinomite as well as connect the CAN bus High, Low and Ground to the green connector on the duinomite.
- a RCA extension cable to be able to connect the screen to the duinomite board - both the duinomite and the monitor had female RCA connectors so a male-male cable is needed to connect the video output of the duinomite.

I will add some photos in the following days to illustrate the different parts.

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