🚗 Obsidian Vehicle Dashboard

A self-updating vehicle cost & maintenance dashboard for Obsidian, built entirely on plain markdown notes, the Dataview plugin, and a CSS snippet — no external services, no spreadsheets, no manual math.

Log a fill-up or a repair as a normal note with a few frontmatter fields, and the dashboard automatically calculates everything else.

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✨ What it tracks

Metric	How
🛣️ Current odometer	Highest odometer reading across all logged notes
⛽ Average consumption (L/100km)	Fill-to-fill method — averaged across every valid full-tank-to-full-tank segment, not a naive total÷total
💶 Fuel cost this month	Sum of fuel spend in the current calendar month
💶 Fuel cost / 100km	Same fill-to-fill segments, cost instead of liters
🔧 Total maintenance cost & cost/km	Oil changes, inspections, tyres, tyre rotations, battery, repairs
🛢️ Next oil change	From the last logged oil change's due date/odometer
📋 Next inspection	Same, for roadworthiness inspections
🔄 Next tyre rotation	Defaults to 10,000 km from tyre fitting date until you log an actual rotation
🛞 Tyre age	From the last logged tyre fitting (or a fallback baseline field)
🔋 Battery age	Same, for the battery
💰 Total ownership cost	Purchase price + all fuel + all maintenance + all other costs
🧾 Other running costs	Insurance, parking, tolls, fines, car washes — tracked separately from mechanical maintenance
🔔 Alerts	Overdue/due-soon warnings for oil, inspection, tyre rotation, aging tyres/battery, and a heuristic for a possibly-missed fill-up

All thresholds (alert windows, tyre/battery age limits, rotation interval) are plain constants at the top of the script — no need to touch the logic to retune them.

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📦 What's in this repo

├── Dashboard.md                        # The live-calculating dashboard note
├── Vehicle Info.md                     # One-time baseline: purchase price, tyre/battery install dates, etc.
├── Vehicle Dashboard Entry Manual.md   # Field-by-field reference for both templates
├── Templates/
│   ├── Fuel Entry Template.md
│   └── Maintenance Entry Template.md
├── Fuel Log/                           # One note per fill-up
├── Maintenance Log/                    # One note per service/repair/cost
└── vehicle-dashboard.css               # Optional styling (cards, colored alerts, bordered tables)

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🚀 Setup

1. Install the Dataview community plugin and enable JavaScript queries (Settings → Community plugins → Dataview → Enable JavaScript Queries — off by default).
2. Copy this repo's contents into your vault (any location — the dashboard finds notes by frontmatter type:, not by folder path).
3. (Optional but recommended) Copy vehicle-dashboard.css into your vault's .obsidian/snippets/ folder, then enable it under Settings → Appearance → CSS snippets.
4. Fill in Vehicle Info.md once with your car's details.
5. Open Dashboard.md — it should render immediately using the sample data. Delete the example notes and start logging your own.

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✍️ Adding entries

Copy Templates/Fuel Entry Template.md or Templates/Maintenance Entry Template.md (e.g. via Obsidian's Templater plugin, or just duplicate + rename), fill in the frontmatter, save.

Minimal fuel entry:

---
type: fuel
date: 2026-09-05
odometer_km: 128450
liters: 38.7
cost_eur: 62.30
full_tank: true
missed_previous_fillup: false
station: "EKO"
---

Minimal maintenance entry:

---
type: maintenance
date: 2026-09-05
odometer_km: 128500
category: oil_change
cost_eur: 90
next_due_date: 2027-09-05
next_due_odometer_km: 138500
notes: "5W-30 synthetic + filter"
---

Full field reference, category list, and common pitfalls are documented in Vehicle Dashboard Entry Manual.md.

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⚠️ Rules that actually matter

• Frontmatter must start on line 1 — no leading blank line, no wrapping it in a ```yaml code fence.
• Dates are always YYYY-MM-DD.
• category values are exact, lowercase, underscored words — see the manual for the full list.
• Fill to full whenever practical — the consumption/economy math only trusts full-tank-to-full-tank stretches.

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🛠️ Customizing

Everything lives in two files:

• Dashboard.md — all calculation logic, in one dataviewjs code block. Category lists (MAINT_CATEGORIES / OTHER_CATEGORIES) and alert thresholds are constants near the top.
• vehicle-dashboard.css — all visual styling, using Obsidian's own theme variables so it adapts to light/dark mode and whatever theme you're running.

To add a new maintenance category, add it to the appropriate array in Dashboard.md — it'll start appearing once you log at least one entry using it.

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📄 License

MIT — use it, fork it, adapt it to your own vehicle (or fleet).