What you can configure on a Haltech dash in NSP
Once your dash is running NSP (Nexus Software Programmer), almost everything about it lives in the navigation tree on the left of the software. It helps to think of the setup in four groups before you start clicking:
| Area | What it decides | When we set it |
|---|---|---|
| Screens | Which layouts are stored, their order, colors and which one appears at power-up | First, so you can see data while you work |
| Brightness | Day and night color schemes and how bright the panel runs | Once the car has seen both daylight and dark |
| Functions | Odometer, alarms and shift lights | After the ECU data is confirmed correct |
| Datalogging | When the dash records and which channels it keeps | Before the first drive or track day |
This article assumes your dash is already NSP-compatible. Older iC-7 units that were configured with ICC need their firmware updated before any of this applies. If you're not sure which you have, send us the details and we'll tell you. Getting data into the dash in the first place is covered in sourcing data for dashes in NSP.
Building your screens
A dash can hold up to five screen layouts. You don't design them from a blank canvas: double-click the Add Screen thumbnail and pick one of the preset layouts NSP offers. To get rid of one, select its thumbnail and use the right-click menu. The thumbnails can be dragged into a new order, and that order is the order the driver steps through on the road.
A few decisions sit alongside the layouts themselves:
- Startup screen: either a fixed screen every time, or whichever screen was showing when the car was last shut off.
- Navigation style: one button that cycles through every screen, or two buttons for next and previous.
- Which buttons: the dash's own buttons or switches you've wired into it.
Our habit is a simple street screen, a warm-up or diagnostics screen, and a track screen with only what matters at speed. Five slots sounds limited until you realize a driver rarely uses more than three.
Select a screen in the navigation tree and you can recolor each element and change its transparency. Every screen has two color schemes, one for daytime and one for night, so it's worth dimming the night palette rather than relying on brightness alone.
Choosing what each gauge shows
Click an element on the screen, such as a bar gauge, and it gets a cyan outline to show it's selected. Its settings appear alongside. Press Select to choose the channel it displays. The list includes everything arriving over CAN from your ECU plus anything wired straight into the dash.
| Setting | What it does | Our advice |
|---|---|---|
| Label Text | The name printed next to the value | Use what the driver actually says. "Boost" reads faster than "MAP" mid-corner |
| Units | The unit the value is shown in | Pick one system and stick with it across every screen, for example °F and psi |
| Decimal places | Display precision | Zero for temperatures and RPM, one or two only where it's useful, like lambda |
| Display Minimum / Maximum | The range the gauge draws across, from the bottom of a bar to the top, or the sweep of a dial | Set it just wider than normal operation so movement is easy to see |
| Warning Minimum / Maximum | Where the gauge changes color to warn you. On a dial this becomes the red zone | Match these to your engine's real limits, not a generic value |
Day, night and screen brightness
There are two ways for the dash to decide it's night:
- Park Light input: the dash watches a wired input for voltage from the parking lights. By default this is AVI9. Lights on means night mode.
- Ambient Light: the dash uses its built-in light sensor. You set a threshold for switching to night and another for switching back to day. NSP shows the live light level, and you can also put the Ambient Light Level channel on a screen so you can read it on a drive without a laptop.
We lean toward the ambient sensor on cars that see tunnels or parking garages, and the park light input on cars where the owner wants predictable behavior. With the ambient option, check the reading at dusk before you commit to thresholds, and leave a gap between the day and night values so the screen doesn't flicker between modes.
The brightness table
Screen brightness comes from a table with ambient light on one axis and panel brightness as the output. More light at the sensor gives a brighter screen, less light dims it, and you shape the curve in between.
You can go further by making it a 3D table with a brightness mode as the second axis. Each row is its own curve, and you can have up to eight of them. The driver cycles through the modes using a built-in or wired button, which is handy for someone who finds the automatic level too bright at night.
If constant adjustment bothers you, shape the table as a step instead of a slope: one low value below a chosen light level and one high value above it. The screen then has just two states, dim and bright, and stays put between them.
Odometer, alarms and shift lights
Odometer
The odometer is a dash channel that accumulates distance. Besides the obvious, it's useful for tracking oil changes and fuel economy. To set the starting value, connect to the dash, type the reading into NSP and press Enter. The dash updates right away, which matters when you're swapping in a dash on a car with known mileage.
Alarms
Alarms are text warnings that pop up along the bottom of the screen when a channel crosses a limit. You'll find them under Functions > Alarms. Press Add New and a node for the new alarm appears in the tree. Select it to set it up:
- Type the message the driver will see. Keep it short and specific: "LOW OIL PRESS" beats "WARNING".
- Choose the channel the alarm watches.
- Turn on an upper limit, a lower limit, or both.
- Decide whether it should stay quiet with the engine stopped, which the dash treats as below 450 RPM. For oil pressure, you almost always want this on.
- Pick text and background colors and a transparency so it stands out without hiding the gauges.
Alarms can be ordered by priority, so if two trigger at once the one that matters most is shown. To edit an alarm later, just select its node again.
On dashes with an LED bar, each alarm can also light chosen LEDs in a chosen color, either steady or flashing. We like a flashing red pair on the outer edges for anything that means "lift now", because peripheral vision catches it even when you aren't looking at the text.
Each alarm has its own clear mode. In Manual, the alarm stays up, even after the reading returns to normal, until someone presses the assigned button. A short press clears the most recent alarm and a long press clears all of them. Timer and Manual clears with the button the same way, but if nobody presses it, the alarm drops out on its own a set time after the condition has gone away. Use Manual for anything you need to know happened, such as oil pressure.
Shift lights
On a dash with an LED bar, every LED gets a color and an RPM at which it turns on. That's all you need to build a sequence. A common pattern starts at the outer LEDs and works inward as RPM climbs, with the final pair lit at the shift point. Set the first LED early enough to give the driver warning, and put the last one where the engine stops making power, not at the rev limiter. The ECU-side version is covered in shift lights.
Datalogging from the dash
The dash logs much like a Haltech ECU does, and you can start it three ways:
| Mode | How it works | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Always On | Logging starts as soon as the dash has power | Cars being diagnosed, where you want everything |
| Datalog Switch Input | Logs while a built-in or wired switch is on | Track days where the driver chooses the session |
| Channel | Logs while a channel is past a threshold, such as RPM above a set value or throttle nearly wide open | Capturing only the pulls that matter. Can be combined with a switch |
Internal memory is 512 MB and it loop-logs: once it's full, the oldest logs are overwritten. That's why it pays to be selective about what gets recorded and how often. NSP lets you sort channels into groups with different sample rates. Fast-moving channels like RPM go in a quick group, coolant temperature in a slower one, and something like fuel level can be sampled roughly once a second. Slow channels logged fast just waste memory. If you're unsure where to start, NSP offers a recommended channel set.
There's also PC logging. With a laptop connected, press F6 to start and F6 again to stop, and the log is saved to the computer. It captures every channel the dash has enabled, not just the onboard selection, so it's our go-to when we're sorting out a problem with the car on jack stands.
Common questions
Why is my gauge showing the wrong value?
Check the channel first, then the units. Most "wrong" readings are either the wrong source channel or a unit mismatch. If the data comes from a third-party ECU, confirm the CAN setup in the supported channel list and the dash and ECU IO article.
Can I use a Haltech dash with a non-Haltech ECU?
Yes, with the right CAN setup. We have guides for Link, Hondata K-Pro and others in the knowledge base.
Which dash should I buy?
For most street and weekend cars, the iC-7 color display dash covers everything above. If you want help choosing, book a free 30-minute consultation.
