Quote from: ghostrider_23 on October 22, 2011, 07:13:06 AM
Sadly I really like this item and have ask for more information about how it works and how it is installed. If it works on my 2009 GS I will buy it. Way too often I am riding down the road and think I have another gear only to find I am in  6th gear. EFI I can live without but a gear indictor would be nice

.....and finding out that you were realy in 6th was such a crucial thing and the indicator would of made life so much easyer?

This product looks pretty good. I have been intouch with a rep from th company and he has sent me the installation sheet for the gear reader. I will give you an update soon.

when people do front end swaps do people have to change out the speedo? I wouldn't mind that GSX650F cluster, would it be swap tire/front end and go?

I am really not the person to ask that but I bet there are a couple of ppl in here that could.

If the donor bike had a cable drive speedo, you could use its panel and the speed would be accurate, but many newer bikes don't use a cable drive for the speedo, so it wouldn't be "plug and play".

I've drawn up a PCB following Roberto's schematic from:

http://www.stanford.edu/~sanjayd/gear_indicator.pdf

I should get all the parts to finish this up in 5-6 weeks depending on shipping for the board from china.

 ForcedFour,

How will it work?

What yearswill it work on?

There are local places that have really good prices and high quality boards with about 3 day turn around. I've used Sunstone Circuits - always inexpensive and high quality. They provide free software for board design, too. I have no idea why you have to go to China for a dozen small boards.

The board does not appear to have clean buses for power and ground. Doesn't seem to have decoupling capacitors. The schematic does not show decoupling caps - however that is standard electronics design convention. The schematic shows "nf" capacitors - not a standard designation. The photo of the prototype shows electrolytic caps - probably 1 to 30 mf. That would be more appropriate. Pulldown resistors on output of 74147 are unnecessary as the outputs of the 74147 can properly drive a 7404 inverter. Don't know the reason for going from TTL to cmos.  LS type ICs would be better. It all could be done with 1 programmable IC (a PAL or a GAL). Using all TTL I don't think you need those inverters so would be 2 ICs instead of 3.

The nano-farad designation of capacitors is very unusual. Normally we use microfarad and picofarad. These 2 capacitors are grossly undersized for the noisy power from a motorcycle (I looked at it on an oscilloscope as I am making a video showing the difference in a MosFet regulator. Spikes at least to 16v and negative spikes down to 8v. MosFet should eliminate that - I hope).

If U4 is the regulator - where is the heat sink and what is the part number and current rating? I wouldn't feel comfortable with that driving LEDs. A large copper area on the board would help for heat sink.

These days at places like Sunstone, a 4 layer board that size might be a dollar more. The extra copper would help with noise and heat sinking the regulator.


Overall, a rather old and primitive electronics design. While it will work it is far from being a good design or layout.

Quote from: ghostrider_23 on October 26, 2011, 10:38:50 AM
ForcedFour,

How will it work?

What yearswill it work on?

It works in conjunction with the gear position switch. when a gear is engaged it pulls the corresponding pin on the encoder low which gets translated into binary then output to a 7 segment display. I would assume it would work on any bike that the gear switch fits on. I'm not super familiar with whats compatible with what though.

I use Proteus (ISIS/ARES) for PCB design, works quite well.

Using a more local PCB place would've been a quicker and would've most likely has better QOS but its hard to beat the prices from China. I used itead studio for the boards.

Common problem with layout software is they do their own thing. I always manually lay out the power and ground first so they are clean and of sufficient size for low noise. Especially when I have PICs, SX's, Z80's or other processors on the board. One guy designed a board years ago using an electronic organ design of mine with microprocessors. Nothing ultra special, just 4 Z-80's and associated DA circuitry. He didn't run straight, clean power and ground. They went over, under, around, through-hole and looked like a rats nest. No amount of decoupling or added power wires would make it run faster than 4mhz. My design of the board runs at max 10mhz for Z80's and have been running in pipe organs for 25 years. (Something I used to design, not much market for it now.)

I would have run power and ground first. Used SIP pack for pull ups and pull downs (1/3 the space needed) and probably used 2 SIP packs right at the output connector to reduce length of traces or at least put the output resistor pack at the output connector

Agreed, an auto router when doing anything with higher speeds may not optimize your layout but I threw this together quick and speed is not a factor with this board application. Using a SIP would've been a much better idea. I should've thought about that.

Are you designing this for GS500?

What is your market group?

Quote from: ForcedFour on October 26, 2011, 10:14:00 AM
I've drawn up a PCB following Roberto's schematic from:

http://www.stanford.edu/~sanjayd/gear_indicator.pdf

I should get all the parts to finish this up in 5-6 weeks depending on shipping for the board from china.

Cool!  It's really fun to see development on this idea! 

The original implementation never failed in continuous operation, and exposed to all kinds of weather over about 2 years. It was built mostly as a proof of concept/starting point. As was pointed out, there is lots of room for design improvement, but that's ok. I hope it sparks experimentation, development, and (especially) more working installations. 

I haven't had time to actually install this on my bike yet, its not stored at my house but I should get around to it this week if I'm lucky.

I plan on putting it just underneath the tach's needle's center point and make it part of the gauge face.



http://youtu.be/uCntyVW09qM

Where and how does it hook into the bike???

What years would it be for???

Wasn't there a guy from Spain or something making these for like a hundred bucks?