Manuals

Customizing your dashboards in Shadow Dash MS

Details

You can add your own customized dashboards to shadow dash, any TunerStudio Dashboard can be loaded by Shadow Dash and will look very much the same as in TunerStudio. For best results use TunerStudio 2.19 or higher.

 

Shadow Dash by defaults has 8 dashboards for any firmware it may be talking to, that is 4 landscape and 4 portrait dashboards. They are broken down in the following way:

Page 1 - This is the main home screen dash, it primarily contains gauges that are available on the phone itself so that it will work and display information without being connected to a controller. Once you are connected to a controller. The .dash files for Page 1 dashboards are found in:

/Shadow Dash MS/home_landscape.dash

and

/Shadow Dash MS/home_portrait.dash

 

Page 2 and 3 are the primary dashboards to be customized. These dashboards are specific to the firmware family of you controller and stored in the project for that firmware family. The files will be found at:

/Shadow Dash MS/[YourFirmwareFamilyProject]/dashboard/dashboard_0_landscape.dash

/Shadow Dash MS/[YourFirmwareFamilyProject]/dashboard/dashboard_0_portrait.dash

/Shadow Dash MS/[YourFirmwareFamilyProject]/dashboard/dashboard_1_landscape.dash

/Shadow Dash MS/[YourFirmwareFamilyProject]/dashboard/dashboard_1_portrait.dash

where [YourFirmwareFamilyProject] will be one of the following based on your MegaSquirt:

  • MS1_BG - Base B&G 3.0 MS1 firmware
  • MS1_Extra - Any MS1_Extra firmware
  • MS2_BG - Any MSII B&G firmware
  • MS2_Extra - Any MS2Extra firmware
  • MS3 - Any MS3 Firmware

If you create a new Dashboard using TunerStudio, you can then replace the .dash files for any of the page 2 and page 3 dashboards. Next time you connect to a controller within that firmware family your new dashboards will be used.

 

Tips for making Shadow Dash Dashboards in TunerStudio:

The shape of the dashboard is very imported, before making any changes or customizations the aspect ratio needs to be set so the dashboard components will display properly on your target device. TunerStudio has a feature to lock the aspect ratio to make editing dashboards easier.
 
Activate designer mode by right clicking on the dashboard then on the “Designer Mode” option at the bottom of the list.
 
Right click >> Dashboard Designer >> Force Aspect Ratio
 
Now enter the correct aspect ratio to match the screen on your target device.

 

The Page 4 dashboards are generated from the ini and will always represent the default dash.

 

Custom.ini files


Shadow Dash also supports custom.ini files in the same manor as TunerStudio. You can copy the same custom.ini file that you use in your TunerStudio Project to the dir:

/Shadow Dash MS/[YourFirmwareFamilyProject]/projectCfg/

 

This custome.ini will be picked up and loaded just as it is in TunerStudio, thus allowing you to load dashboards that are referencing your own custom OutputChannels. Any additional [Gauge] definitions you may have in the custom.ini will also be loaded and displayed with the Gauge long click menu.

 

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