My ST becomes a project bike...

[Alberto]

Last year I scratched accidently dashboard glass and had to purchase whole unit from ebay with intention to replace a glass. Also, I have on the shelf finished old project with arduino based cruise control unit. I hesitated to install it, because I didn't find appropriate place to mount magnets on the front or rear wheel for speed sensor.
And, looking at disassembled dashboard, I had an idea, why not to get rid of mechanical part of speedo and replace it with electronic one, and use speed pickup sensor for both devices, speedo and cruise control?

Need to mention, that mechanical speedo is not so reliable as other parts of ST (at least, in my case). I had speedo failed twice in 5 years of riding ST, both times while riding long distance trips.
So considering this, I decided to go with the new project. This is my almost final result in couples of pictures:

speedo sensor was disassembled, and instead of worm gears I placed inside a hall sensor:


then refabricated speedo unit, and installed stepper motor to drive mileage counter, and servo to drive needle. Main idea was leave visual appearance of the unit intact:


I also finished with mocking up the electronic part (of course, based on Arduino again) and programming:



Bench test was passed fine, next step - put controller into a small box, install speed pickup sensor, and go for a field test )

 

[Larry Fine]

Very impressive, Mr. Kotter!

 

[Uncle Phil]

Nice bit of work there.
Your approach is pretty slick to keep all of it 'visually' original - I like that!
So far, I've only had one speedo cable fail among my 4 ST1100s and 400,000+ miles.

 

[Alberto]

I remembered one more speedo failure - when I took off with a lock on the brake rotor. It smashed speedo cable, had to replace it one more time)

 

[Uncle Phil]

I remembered one more speedo failure - when I took off with a lock on the brake rotor. It smashed speedo cable, had to replace it one more time)

I don't know if that should count as 'speedo failure' or not!

 

[Sunday Rider]

The title had me worried the blue machine was toast! Very nice work with keeping the old look and modern internals. Well done!

 

[Erdoc48]

Ouch! My head hurts from…electronics. I could have never come up with that. Good work.

 

[St-Gerard]

Love it , when someone gets to show off their Talents, nice work!

 

[John OoSTerhuis]

Bravo!

 

[Alberto]

worried the blue machine was toast!

sorry for that. Hope this won't happen.. started to watch speeduino EFI videos on youtube, had to take some pills to stop thinking about it.

from…electronics

electronics usually is easiest part of these projects. But when you start to put things together, and start working with mechanical part - that's where headache come from.. Need to acquire 3D printer..

 

[STRider]

I like the way your head works! Bravo

My only speedo failure was on my much newer AND lower mileage ST1300! Closest thing to that on my 1100 was being a little too exuberant tightening the oval retaining screw and cracked the plastic fitting at the wheel end of the cable. It's now safety wired to the speedometer gearbox.

However, the tach on my 1100 did fail a few years back. An ebay replacement addressed that problem. Internet speculation points to a failed capacitor on the electronics board (about as primitive as it can be and still call it 'electronics'). Someday I may repair that and get it back in circulation (read: list for sale here or on ebay).

 

[Sadlsor]

Wishing of all the shyte that I actually know... some of it was actually USABLE for things like this.

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school... it's a wonder I can think at all."
-- Paul Simon