Hi everyone, well this is just throw it out there and see what happens.
I am wondering why a Single Board Computer could not be put in a motorcycle
to handle all the added extras , eg lights , horn sound systems , onboard camera feed.
Run this as a whole separate circuit . I am seeing some of the lithium batteries are having
extra points where you can attached cables for power.
By doing it this way , if you add something , you do not screw up the engine voltage and get errors.
Personally i was wondering , if you ran 2 SBC , one for the motor and one for others.
It would make the electrical system a lot easier to handle and repair.
I am not an autoelectrician at all , I am NFI ( No freaking idea )
So if the short answer it does not work that way , will suffice..
Regards Mike

 

I mean this as no offense, but.... I was an auto mechanic back in the 70's. Worked on cars that you could actually work on. I had since gotten into manufacturing and retired couple years ago. I wanted a part time gig, so I got one at our local community college in the auto lab. The one thing I have learned is I'm glad I'm not a mechanic today! There is so much electronic crap on new cars today, you can't do anything without first "consulting" the electronic system. Plus the engineers have designed these cars so that they cannot be worked on by normal people with simple tools. Everything must go back to a "trained" technician. I personally would not like to see any more electronic stuff on my bike than what is already there!!!
But you do have some ideas that may be beneficial to others. Just wonder if this would ever happen.....

 

Money and size. Harley's should have been required to update to OBDII years ago.

 

Life was simpler with a tach and dwell meter

 

Still have mine, plus a timing light

Jim

 

And points system. In my opinion, older Harley's would be much more desirable to some. Mine still hangs on the wall and I remember the dwell setting and timing setting on my first new car. A 69 Firebird Convertible. I restore it once for me, again for my first son and again ragged out for original window sticker (still had it) to a air force pilot at Langley.

Interesting enough, it did have some interesting technology. It had a fiber optically cable. The light in the AM radio had a fiber cable attachment that ran down and lit the ashtray.

Interesting, son read were a point less reader and Mallory ignition gave it more power. Bet is wasn't a month when I got a call from the State Police asking me to come help my son get his car off the interstate so he would not have to tow it (good old days)

That stupid box had fried. He held his big 6 D cell light for me as I put it back to the old system.

 

super +1 on $$$$
with modules, cost is way cheaper. if a board goes south, it has to go even for a simple component like a failed diode.
can a single board handle everything, why sure with smt and computer on a chip. they have postage stamp computers that fly drones and such.
postage stamp is the size of it.
it is easier to diagnose and repair.
i used to work on tv's and eveything was discrete components and took up a lot of room and weighed a ton. now the whole thing is on a chip.
are they repairable, well yes and no. the way they solder the chips requires very expensive and tech equipment which hardly anyone can own. i have 16,000 dollars of sencor equipment that i have not turned on in decades.
look at the cadilliac systems, need a computer just to diagnose the computer but look at what it does. it can lose all the coolant and go a good ways in limp mode since individual cyl's are controlled, gets hot, shut it down and pump air through it and turn it back on.
they are here to stay, could we be doing this with a mechanical type writer???

 

Sure, shouldn't be real hard. A Raspberry Pi could do it. Problem is writing the logic. Very few people have the skill set to write it and make it work in an acceptable time frame. I could do a basic engine management system but when you start adding in the pollution control, lights, camera, horn, anti lock brakes, radio, GPS, inter com and whatelse, it would take a lot of time and effort of several people to put it together and debug it in less than a few months. In a few months, some new technology will be by to make a lot of your work obsolete.

A lot of today's equipment is run under a proprietary control system for several reasons. First on that list is it would make it nearly impossible for anyone, unless they had the blessings of the factory and the software to do anything with the computer. Have to take it to the dealer and have them connect, for a fee of course. Also makes it hard for the government to snoop and see if yo are cheating the pollution controls. If properly designed, makes it real easy to add features like cruise control. Self diagnostics are a big plus for those not real familiar with how it actually works.Once you get past the design phase and work the bugs out, a computer for your Ultra Classic probably costs about $35 to make. The real cost is the front end, that and dealer mark up. A good example of that is when I worked for Cummins, I needed a governor controller, about the size of a cell phone. Cummins wanted $955 for this part. I knew who made it for Cummins and went to them. They had several hundred on the shelf for $88 each but couldn't sell them to me as it was a dealer proprietary part. Talk about a mark up...... Found a German company who made a replacement for $170 that worked way better than the OEM. Took some thought and effort to make it work.

I'd be just fine with a motorcycle with a magneto ignition, carburetor and a kick starter. The alternator is a great improvement over a generator though. I could do without a radio, intercom, turn signals, cruise control, GPS, alarm systems and other bells and whistles but do appreciate them and use them.

 

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I have come to the conclusion that YES for the engine control a computer is good ( sometimes)
I think that if you are making a million bikes , and the cost of having the lights etc on a second circuit would cost about 50-100 dollars
more , that adds up and takes away from the bottom line.
But if you had the non essential ( that is non essential to the motor running) on a completely second board, eg Raspberry PI industrial version
would be a good thing .
I thinking that if if it was done correctly , you could re wire the lights etc ( I have been reading how so many people have problems attaching other things)
Put in something that tells the ECM BCM that lights are ok etc.
But now if i had all the information coming in , i could have a new display for the speedo , showing speed , revs etc and put on 2 rear facing cameras
No more mirrors .or blind spots.
Think I will pay an electrical engineer to have a look at the wiring diagram , see if it can be done .
I really appreciate the comments , my take from them is that , it could be done but would be difficult but if you wanted to add add any accessories
it would be a lot easier and you would not muck up the engine .
Regards
Mike

 

+1 mr. gunny
i am not much into efi but forced to dwell there out of necessity. when we delve into the ecu, we are only scratching the surface and maybe if we are lucky see only the first 3 layers. offshore, the computer control is about 7 layers thick and you need the proprietary software to get to the bottom where you can actually see the command and control, aka, to open a valve the command data byte, the receiving logic, the command byte to the driver, the valve opening, feedback data byte, and force stop command.
on the old ladder logic/relay systems, you opened a huge panel full of wires and relays controlled by human input via switches and input via mechanical switches that allowed the operation of that piece of equipment. you better have a bunch of extra relays and switches. today, you have allen bradley controllers that you can put in your back pocket all tied into the master computer. you can bring on a complete oil platform from a remote station far away, so hence the colonial pipeline hack. a man can make it, a man can break it.
i have a friend at 16 years old on a tandy hx 1000 computer running a whopping 512 khz processor that broke into a military facility, today he goes all over the world doing anti-hack assessment for corporations and he says it is a FULL time job. he says it is hard to compete with young people with nothing to do and even more so if they have a government behind them.
remember delete is not delete.