Hi Mike,
I was looking through the archives and trying to find a little history on
your project. It looks great though!
Can you recap and share a few details on it? What is the hardware? Does it
interface with a palm or PC or directly to the controller?
Oh yeah, a little background might be good.
Do you old timers remember back when this list was just starting how
we talked about trying to update Peter Ohler's Palm software to run
on a modern PalmOS? (http://www.ohler.com/palm/EVDash.html) Well,
that got my brain buzzing so I bought an older version of CodeWarrior
and a PalmOS programming book and set to learn'n. Somewhere along
the way the brain asked, "Why not start from scratch? Why not use a
microcontroller that you can customize and add goodies to?" So I
tossed the Palm idea out the window. The only real issue with the
new plan was that I didn't know squat about electronics. Zero. So
I'm learning all about electrons, resisters, capacitors and stuff as
I go.
Which microcontroller? That's still not etched in stone but the
prototype is build around a Basic Stamp 2. (http://www.parallax.com/)
The BS2 is one of the more expensive micro's out and it's got a
limited feature set compared to some newer micro's. But it's old age
does have a couple of advantages, lots of add on hardware is out
there and it has a large support community. I also bought a Z-World
Jackrabbit (http://www.zworld.com/products/bl1800) but Mr. UPS hasn't
dropped it off yet. I'm also seriously interested in the Oopic
(http://oopic.com/). And there's a couple of others in the running
too but who's names escape me at the moment.
It's entirely possible for the BS2 to measure pack voltage/amperage
but the Alltrax has all that and more in it's microcontroller. It
just makes sense to ask the BS2 to get that info from the controller
and simply show it to us. I have a hall effect sensor hooked up to
the BS2 at this point to measure wheel rotation. From that we can
get speed and, if we're not using a tranny, motor RPM too. There's a
few ports leftover on the BS2 to measure the motor temp - important
for those of us running Eteks! I have a servro hooked up that moves
in relation to speed sorta like an analog speedo. It's kinda cute
but doesn't work how I'd like yet.
The LCD I'm using is a Seetron ILM-216
(http://seetron.com/ilm216_1.htm). I chose it because it uses serial
and was really simple for an electronics novice like me to hook up.
It's one of the more expensive units but it does have some very nice
features. For example, it has the option for a piezo buzzer that
could come in handy for alarms, software backlighting so you can
decide if you want the backlighting on or off, custom characters for
nifty bar graphs and it supports up to four hardware switches. These
switches will allow the display to toggle between different display
options and for entering user options.
Lots more to share but I gotta go to the day job now. More later...
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http://www.electricmotorcycles.net/
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