paulie75
Junior Member
I'm working on a new project, looking for some ideas/suggestions!
Summary: I'm installing a 16x2 character backlit LCD in the dashboard to display a bunch of stuff: battery voltage, gear indicator, tachometer, ambient temperature, and notifications from my smartphone. It will have a bluetooth radio to get notifications from the phone and also feed data to the phone for recording/displaying (voltage, tach, speed, etc).
Cost: It's very inexpensive (<$30). $13 for the Arduino Nano microcontroller (any arduino will do - that one just happens to be small and cheap). LCD is ~$3 on eBay. $8 for the blueooth serial module, $1 for the air temperature sensor, and maybe at most another $5 for other random components (schmitt trigger, some diodes, some resistors, wires, connectors, etc). I'll also need to box it up to make it at least water-resistant.
So far I have working:
1). The voltage measurement
2). Tachometer readout simulated. I generated a 4-pulse-per-rotation square wave and then read it back in - I'm waiting for parts before I actually tap into the tachometer wire, because the microcontroller can't handle the high-voltage.
3). Bluetooth connection to the phone (to send alerts to the device or read raw serial from it) is working.
The ambient temp display is waiting for the sensor IC to arrive.
The wheel speed sensor connection is waiting for a schmitt trigger (gear indicator will be calculated from engine speed and wheel speed).
Here's a Bench Test Video
(Voltage is being measured off a supply, tachometer is cycling between 1000 and 10000 RPM. Temp and gear indicator are just fake display placeholders currently)
Questions
What else would be useful to have on here?
What kinds of things would you want to be sent automatically from the phone to the bike display, or bike to phone? (incoming call/text notifications? weather alerts?)
Is there anything else you'd want to measure on the bike?
Any other sensors worth including? (GPS, accelerometer, gyrometer, tilt, sound, open discussion!)
Do you think there's any need to have a button near the display for any menu or display type? Or is having a passive display preferred?
Thanks! I'll post the whole finished product when I'm done (might be another month or so - shipping takes FOREVER from china!)
Hey Jeff, If you need any type of housing machined up out of lexan of some mounts, let me know. I enjoy the fun little stuff. Machining is more fun when you don't have to do it for a living!!! I'd also be interested in a unit as well, so it will be cool to see how things turn out.