A Motorcycle Dashboard Straight From The ECU

Classic motorcycles are the wild west of information displays. Often lacking even basic instrumentation such as a fuel gauge and sometimes even a speedometer, motorcycles have come a long way in instrument cluster design from even 20 years ago. There’s still some room for improvement, though, and luckily a lot of modern bikes have an ECU module that can be tapped into for some extra information as [Sophie Wheeler] illustrates with her auxiliary motorcycle dashboard.

This display is built for a modern Honda enduro, and is based upon an ESP32 module. The ESP32 is tied directly into the ECU via a diagnostic socket, unlike other similar builds that interface with a CAN bus specifically. It can monitor all of the bike’s activity including engine temperature, throttle position, intake air temperature, and whether or not the bike is in neutral. [Sophie] also added an external GPS sensor so the new display can also show GPS speed and location information within the same unit.

[Sophie] credits a few others for making headway into the Honda ECU. [Gonzo] created a similar build using a Raspberry Pi and more rudimentary screen but was instrumental in gathering the information for this build. If you’re looking for a display of any kind for your antique motorcycle which is lacking an ECU, though, we would suggest a speedometer made with nixie tubes.

12 thoughts on “A Motorcycle Dashboard Straight From The ECU

  1. This looks like the sort of thing I need to do for my family car, which has a woefully poor set of gauges. It would be even better if I could persuade the radio to display info via a spoof RDS feed, as “Radio Text”…

      1. Thanks, it (supposedly) has EFI, Model Year 2009.
        The weird thing, maybe, is that it’s VIN ZAPM578F….
        seems to be for a 50cc, which is confusing for insurance purposes.
        The only work I’ve done on it, is replace the clock battery.

        Is the Service Manual available to mere mortals like me?

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