I have splashed out and bought a £25 Chinese Speedo off ebay. It came with no instructions but I have now wired it to show high beam, indicator left and right and neutral. Has anyone else used one and if so where did you mount the sensor and magnet and how did you calibrate the speed. I have made notes of the wiring if anybody needs them.
This looks similar to the trailtech speedos which come with a replacement disc brake bolt that has a magnet built into the end of it so my advice would be to superglue the magnet to the end of one of your disc bolts, this will also keep it as close as possible to your fork leg which will help the reed sensor or hall effect sensor in picking up the magnetic field. The sensor goes on the inside of the fork leg so that the magnet on the disc rotates past it.
Once your magnet is being detected you need to calibrate the wheel circumference into the speedo.. no idea how to do this on that model though so good luck! Maybe find some trailtech instructions on youtube or online and see if they are similar.
-- Edited by robs on Friday 17th of May 2019 08:05:11 PM
This may be obvious but you get the circumference of the wheel by measuring the radius (centre of the front wheel axle to the ground in inches) then pi*r2, so if your radius is 9" then:
9*2 = 18 18*3.14 = 56.52"
You then need to work out how to get into the settings of the speedo and enter this into the wheel size setting.
Note:
Measuring the radius whilst sitting on the bike gives a more accurate reading than measuring the diameter directly since the tyre will compress slightly.
Check if the speedo uses inches, centimetres, or millimetres.
Should be as simple as that.
-- Edited by robs on Saturday 18th of May 2019 09:18:01 AM
I would not bother. The sensors don't last offroad, I have gone through 2 to date and it's still not working. I would splash out and get a better built unit.
650katman: I've experimented with bike speedos, make sure you get one with a long enough cable (or go cableless) since most motorbike forks are much longer than your average bike so you might have a bit of trouble mounting the speedo somewhere visible.
I was tryng to find a good but not too pricey aftermarket speedo, but I had to realize that none of them matches my requirements. So I decided to make my own dashboard with arduino and a Nextion touchscreen display, with my own sensors :) Haven’t finished yet, but the prototype is working.
Do you like the GUI design?
-- Edited by Mateja on Friday 1st of November 2019 10:30:44 AM
Hi Mateja, I’ve thought of doing the same but never got that far, we’ll done, display looks great. Please do post more details as the design develops.
Neil
Thanks guys, I’m quite happy to see that you are interested in what I am doing.
Of course, I will share the development with you. I haven’t thought about github since I just barely know how it works, but I will give it a shot.
robs:
I had a look at your project, it’s fun to see that not I am the only one to try to accomplish something like this :)
I was thinking about 7-segment displays, but I had to realize that they are more difficult to use, also capable of much less than these Nextion display, so I went with these.
For those who are interested in the DIY dashboard I am currently working on, I made a project page on hackaday.io, with the title Motorcycle Dashboard.
I checked your codes, they are much more complex than what I am using right now. Did you test if this code measures accurately? Any experiences with it?
If my code won't work, I am gonna try yours.
-- Edited by Mateja on Sunday 3rd of November 2019 08:12:41 PM