| skumlerud |
18-08-08 06:35 PM |
Electrical mods - ideas wanted
I'm in the process of changing the electrical system on my curvy. Instead of the traditional harness, I'm going to replace most of the wiring with a couple of microcontrollers and a databus. There will be one microcontroller in the front of the bike, this will read the status of the handlebar switches and control a small LCD display as well as the idiot lights. There will also be one microcontroller in the rear (possible in the tail light) which will control all lights on the bike. These microcontrollers will communicate using a simple serial protocol. By doing this I'll loose a lot of wiring and be able to do all sorts of fancy stuff with the lights, LCD, idiot lights etc. For now I won't do anything with the ignition and starter circuits, but that might change.
I'm also going to replace all lights except the headlight with LEDs (bought 200 ultrabright white LEDs a while ago, have to use them for something!) as these respond a lot quicker than bulbs.
By using a microcontroller to control the lights, I can do all sorts of tricks. I can modulate all lights except the headlight, switch/fade/modulate each light individually, adjust the intensity of the lights automatically depending on how dark it is etc. There is also the LCD which will be mounted next to the gauges, this can be used for all sorts of things.
Due to illness (hurt my back a while ago, and recently had some spinal surgery done) I can't work on my bike for quite a while. So I have this laptop, a couple of Arduinos, breadboards and various electronic components next to my bed and want to make something useful. I've made a mock-up of the final system using LEDs to represent the various lights, and I'm now working on the software. So far I'm aiming to implement the following features: - Flashing the indicators. Hazard-lights. Self-canceling. The indicators will not simply flash on/off, but flash on and fade out.
- The tail light will be modified, I'm going to remove the bulbs and replace them with loads of LEDs. The LEDs will be divided into four areas, each of them can be controlled individually. So I'm going to run these at a steady low intensity when operating as a normal tail light, and do something fancy when operating as brake light. E.g. flashing from left to right (Knight rider style), pulsing, rapid flashing etc.
- I'll replace the sidelight with some ultrabright LEDs and modulate it when the head light is switched on.
- Head light (dipped beam) will always be on whenever the engine is running. Will use the oil pressure signal to determine if the engine is running or not. Switching it off while running the starter helps starting when it's cold.
- The LCD (a simple, two-line character based display with backlight) will replace most of the idiot lights, the exception will be the oil pressure and temperature lights which I'll keep hardwired just to be safe. I already have a Trailtech Vapor so I won't implement a speedo or tachometer.
- Welcome-message on the LCD and flashing lights when the ignition is switched on.
Any ideas on what else to do? I'm pretty much free to do whatever I want, as all lights are completely controlled in software. I just need some fresh ideas :) |
