I was pretty excited to see him whip out that box with the Caterpillar power edge logo on it. An EMS display! I work for Caterpillar as an engineer and have been wanting to send something in to the EEVBlog for a long time but I never could decide what.
Now, a little info:
Those things you were pressing as if they were switches are actually just a partially opaque insert over LEDs. Those are used for indication of things like a charging problem, seat belt not buckled, check engine light, or any other indication we might want to show the operator. These displays are commonly used across all different machines, and the insert is changed depending on what makes sense for any given machine to show. That way they only have to manufacture a single display and use it all over the place. Caterpillar is big on part reuse. This display is intended to be partnered with a few other modular display pieces that show tachometer, ground speed, odometer, and other useful data. They are all in the same form factor and can link up through a communication bus to each other. I've attached a unfortunately small picture of several of the displays working together. You can see near the top right of the picture is the particular display that Dave as given.
As for doing a teardown on this thing, I'll ask one of our ECM Hardware guys if there is a trick to getting that screen off. Since our ECMs are really well sealed against environmental ingress, they are also a pain in the butt to open up and work on. Usually the method involves a sharp chisel and a large hammer, then a series of flathead screwdrivers/prybars.
If anyone has any questions about it or anything related I'd be happy to try to answer what I can.
Also, this finally spurred me to register here rather than just lurk! First post, woo.