bitdivision

Thanks for all the replies and interest guys. Glad to hear people think it might be a good idea. I will do, nothing much will be happening for a while but I will add pictures as soon as I can! I am still unsure of the platform I want to use. I think the best way (and the way it would be done by an auto manufacturer) is to use a custom ARM board and RTOS however this is not a simple endeavor, there would be a huge amount of code to write to get a functional system going and I really don't want to write a complete GPS system myself. That leaves running some sort of graphical OS, i.e Android or Linux. While Android is a nice idea, I'm a bit worried about boot times. If the dash takes ~30 seconds to boot it's going to be a real pain, so I think linux is the only way to go. With a heavily stripped down system and running QT on top of X I think it should be possible to get functional display in <10 seconds. So that is the plan for the moment. Start doing some development on Linux and then see how it all looks. If necessary I can then move over to Android. WRT to the screen, resistive screens are fairly cheap and abundant so I think I'll start with that. If t he touch regions are laid out fairly far apart, I don't think 'fat fingered' gloves will be too much of a problem. For address entry I'm still leaning towards using a phone. Obviously there will be space around the screen so I can fit in buttons there too (weather proofing becomes a problem here). I don't think there will be many additional sensors that need to be added, the only (optional) one would be a gear shift indicator. The rest of the sensors are there: Tach, Speed sensor, Clock (not sure what this signal actually is), Fuel level, temperature sensor, turn signals, oil pressure, high beam, neutral, PGM-FI. With the addition of a GPS module and Bluetooth I think I can do everything I need to. If I ever get serious about actually producing these then yes, everything would definitely require a custom board. No need to worry about that though until I have something up and running. That's really interesting! I've been looking for other people's projects around this and found a few like this, but I don't think anyone has ever done an integrated GPS. Hacking the CAN implementation would definitely be necessary on most of the modern bikes, would be a fun project if I ever bought one! You're right. Integrating a tablet or large phone into the dashboard would be far simpler. If the tablet had USB-host capabilities it wouldn't be too hard to add a peripheral PCB that would read all the sensors and send them over. That's actually one reason why I'm going to try to get all the sensors coming in over USB, it makes it easier if I ever want to cheat and take the easy route! Looks like they make dashes as well? What would I source? Thanks again for the interest guys!

Wow! Thanks very much Anik. That's perfect! I have a seven inch touch screen on the way which should fit in there nicely.

Hi Anik, As far as I can see the top two corners are cut off. Could you give me the largest (height) rectangle that would fit in the centre? I just need to know what kind of area I'll be able to put a screen in. Cheers

Hi All, I'm going to be buying a 5th Gen at some point in the near future (when the right auction comes along) and I have a fairly big project in mind for it. For a long time it has seemed silly to me that motorcycle dashes have never quite caught up with car dashboards. I have only seen one dash which to my mind makes full use of the technology available, bikes from Mission Motorcycles, you can see their dash here. I almost always need GPS when I'm going on a long trip and generally have to hack together some sort of mount for my phone which is never perfect and is by no means integrated with the bike. If we had an LCD dash with bluetooth/GPS (for internet and phone connectivity), the possibilities for the dash info are hugely increased. A lot of improvements are already available by using a digital dash, e.g skinning the look, lap timers, instantaneous fuel consumption, temps, shift points, data logging etc. etc. If however those dashes used full LCD displays then a huge amount more is possible. GPS directions displayed with your normal dash, weather along your trip, nearby petrol stations, incoming calls, FULLY skinnable display, music etc. etc. To begin with I am probably going to start prototyping this with a Linux board (RasPi, Beagle, something like that) and a colour display however in the end I think the obvious hardware solution is to use an off the shelf, open-source, android board. That would mean that apps could be used on your dash and development would be easier for others. GPS would probably be using Open Street Maps (since integrating any other GPS app is going to be a little difficult, even if OSM is a little immature). As for the interface with the bike's electronics, I think I will probably create a level-shifting board with some onboard processing to collect the data and send via USB to the dev board. If this were ever to be extended to more modern bikes, a CAN interface would also be useful. The control scheme is an interesting conundrum, I think possibly the best solution is a resistive touchscreen (so that it could be used with gloves) however I really don't like the feel of those screens. I'm also considering a rotary encoder and a few buttons which might make GPS entry simpler. Another option is just to use a phone as an entry device i.e type addresses on your phone and send them over bluetooth. Weather proofing is going to be another challenge but that's way off in the future. In any case, this is a very big project. Currently though I'm wondering whether anyone with a 5th Gen might be kind enough to give me some rough measurements of the current dash? It would be nice to know the rough sizes available so I can start looking into screens. Cheers.