Scooterputer, The All-in-one Scooter Computer

ScootDisplay-2

We’ve seen a fair share of carputer builds involving a Raspberry Pi in the last few months, but even the power of a Raspi can’t compete with the awesomeness of this Arduino-powered scooterputer.

Like all awesome projects, this build is the product of a massive case of feature creep. Initially, [Kurt] only wanted a voltage monitor for his battery. With an  Arduino Duemilanove, a voltage divider, and an evening of coding, [Kurt] whipped up a simple device with three LEDs to indicate the status of the batter: either low, good, or charging.

The project was complete until he ran across an awesome OLED screen. Using a touch screen display for just battery monitoring is a bit overkill, so [Kurt] made a trip over to Sparkfun and got his hands on a temperature sensor, real-time clock, accelerometer, GPS sensor, and even a cellular shield.

The resulting scooterputer is a masterpiece of in-vehicle displays: there’s a digital speedometer and GPS unit, and the cellular shield works as a tracking device and a way to download real-time maps of the scooter’s current location with itouchmap.

While the majority of the electronics are hidden under the hood of the scooter, the display of course needed to be out in the weather. To do this, [Kurt] found a nice enclosure with a rubber boot that perfectly fit the OLED display. The display is connected to the Arduino with a cat5 cable, and everything should hold up pretty well as long as [Kurt] doesn’t drive through a hurricane.

You can check out a video of the scooterputuer below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzzKB-dMWsQ&w=580]

13 thoughts on “Scooterputer, The All-in-one Scooter Computer

  1. Seems like a major safety hazard trying to decipher such a small screen with numerous data sets when it’s dancing around at speed (even the speed of a scooter).

    1. I can’t see any digits on the screen any smaller than the ones on the speedo, in fact, the speed digits on screen are considerably larger!

      Personally I think this is an awesome build even if previously featured and the tidyness of it is something that i think we can all aspire to achieve. I have seen plenty of other attempts at hombrew dash displays and this is up there with the cleanest.

      1. Well, add to that the fact that some custom Android software and likely some sort of IO interface would also be needed(did you forget the battery monitor?). Last I heard, the only one around was produced by google, difficult to get, and cost more than the $170 spent to build this praiseworthy piece of work.

        1. The IOIO board uses the android OpenAccesory SDK that’s been available since 14 (4.0) and it uses the ADB which works on any android phone. Almost anything that can be measured or sent out via an arduino can be handled by the IOIO board (including capacitive sensors). So if you already possess a tablet or phone of the android variety, it’s not a bad route and will run you $40.

          The custom software for the android is roughly as hard to program as if you had made the program for a PC. So anyone with a rough working knowledge of Java or C++ and the capability of reading a developer’s guide, should be able to piece the program together in a fairly short amount of time.

          As my current dash is going out on my GSXR, I decided that this would be a good route rather than paying the outrageous prices at the dealer for a new dash. It’s an older bike and will be regulated to the track in a year or so, so losing the odometer reading doesn’t bother me.

  2. This is a pretty great idea! My friend had a scooter like this, once upon a time, and complained about having troubles reading her speedometer accurately, so this would be a welcome help. I think someone already mentioned this, but having it off to the side is a bit of a distraction from the road…It would be better if it replaced the speedometer altogether, but I assume that’s a bit harder of a mod to make. Either way, great idea!

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