Thread: Has anyone yet made a Bikeputer?

He is going to need his concentration for the road. If he puts a bike computer, on his sport bike especially, I think he may get himself killed. Can you imagin trying to scroll through a playlist in city traffic? It's dangerous enough without the added problems. I was a biker for some 28 years, am an avid computer geek and I would not try to "mix" the two. Do you friend a favor and discourage him the best you can. BTW Triumph will make a mechanic out of any man.

I dont know much about bikes but do sport bikes have storage comparments? I know those some of those other bikes do. If it has some sort of a trunk at lesat 7x7x3" or so then you can do it. AND ofcourse youd have to mount the screen up front somehow, that .. well fiberglass with a clear screen up front perhaps. GOOD LUCK

The only reason im not getting the bike right now is overhelming desire of speed.
I rather calm down a bit and live. Then later on... Suzuki gsxr ;d

tell your buddy that i fear for his life.

navigating a bike is not the same a navigating a car (im sure he knows this already)... especially when you are looking through a menu for a specific song. and dont take the bull-***** that he wont look for a song while driving, only at stops... not gonna happen. he'' be looking for songs anytime the desire hits.

also, you are going to have that system blasting pretty loud to overcome the sound of a buell engine and the air whizzing past your head. and if you have a helmet on (hopefully) you have to add that in as something that is going to kill the sound.

also, the electrical systems of motorcycles are not really designed for large ammounts of auziliary equipment. sure lights and stuff are easy to add, but they draw diddly squat for power.

and yes, i have been in this situation already. my friend with a new honda touring bike wanted me to add a radio and mp3 player to his bike. i say i'd have nothing to do with it. for the simple fact that it is too much to concentrate on when riding a bike.

further... there no way im going to do this on my bike(s) either. 1975 kawasaki Z1 900, 1977 kawasaki kz650, and 1969 suzuki t250 (soon to be, i hope)

my 0.02, take it or leave it

~Mike

I'll bite into this

My major question is how are you goin to controll this thing? Touch screen? glider?

what would be super pimp is if you would rig up the display up in his helmet.I can get ahold of some links for some very tiny lcds some of them have res of 640x480

Alright guys, my friend has been riding a harly for 30 years and just wants a way to tune his injection and ignition maps on the fly...meaning either while he's track testing it, or making quick adjustments while at a stop light. It will probably either be a touchscreen, if we can figure out a way to seal it from the elements, or it will be a keypad in the center yoke of his handlebars.

He's not going to be pulling up playlists on the road.

This particular bike does not have storage compartments..it does however have room behind and around the headlight that can be exploited. I believe there is enough room, if everything is rotated in 3-d properly, to fit a hard drive and a mini-itx with the onboard power card...we'll just machine a custom aluminum case for it that is fit around the contours of the headlight area...I'll post what I'm talking about later, I don't have my CAD software at home, but basically we can make any 3d shape out of aluminum, so we should be able to wedge everything in :-)

Originally Posted by FAmonmouth

The origonal post mentioned nothing about playlists or music. He wants this pc for the same reason i bring a laptop with me when i am at the track with my vette. I use it to record performance data and then after my runs i look at the data and see what needs to be tuned.

From the sound of the origonal post this is what he wants the PC for. If i was still seriously into motorcycle racing like i was i would want the same thing.

Thank you! Someone gets it!...datalogging is an application I hadn't thought of, he just wants it as a tuning tool...but datalogging would be awesome too.

Dont know much about the buell but my Kawasaki zx12 has plenty of dead space it the front fairing right behind the headlight. you could make it fit somewhere. ust might not be all in the same place (power supply one place MoBo another) You might have to get creative

Yeah, we're planning on using all of the space behind the fairing, for sure...basically machining a chunk of aluminum to fill the whole space behind the fairing with solid aluminum, then cutting out of it the indentations we need for our components and our wiring, and topping it off with a gauge bezel that incorporates the lcd.

This is the best idea i can come up with for making everything weather safe and as tamper proof as possible...espcially if the top bezel is bolted to the case with torx or similar tamperproof bolts.

Anyone have any ideas for weatherproof cooling/ventilation? if the whole case is basically aluminum, we could encorporate heat sinks that would stick into ducted airflow...or would we need fans blowing directly on the motherboard/hd/psu?