Motorbike Digital Gear Indicator

Hi, I only discovered this forum earlier today and have been searching through posts to find help with my electronics project, there seems to be a very helpful and friendly community here

I have seen that several people have tried this 'Digital Gear Indicator' project before but i have a situation that is different to the other projects. I am going to build the whole system on a breadboard, and would ideally like it to be something similar to this:

Simulation of changing through the gears --> ADC --> Counter --> Decoder --> 7 Segment Display

As you can see I am going to simulate the bike changing through the gears. I am looking for the best way to do this, I have thought of using a Signal Generator and create a sin wave with a greater frequency depending on the gear, not sure if this will work? Or I have read that a sensor on the bike (not quite sure where?) will give out a different voltage depending on the gear that the bike is in, but it is quite important that i use an ADC within the system.

Also what would be the best way to convert the digital output from the ADC to something that could be understood by the 7seg decoder?

Any comments on this are appreciated

Thanks in advanced!!

What about just using a couple of switches connected to the gear lever and a counter?

yeah i thought about this but my project requires me to use an 'advanced' electronics sub-system, hence i would like to use an ADC at some point but i really cant get my head around exactly how im going to get it to work

1ceburn said:

yeah i thought about this but my project requires me to use an 'advanced' electronics sub-system, hence i would like to use an ADC at some point but i really cant get my head around exactly how im going to get it to work

Click to expand...

Use a PIC - one chip, does everything you need! - just program it to do the job.

Hi 1ceburn,

I don't quite understand the use of an ADC.

Advancing to a higher gear the normal way is to step on a pedal, reversing to a lower gear the lever is moved upwards.

All you need is an up/down counter and a 7segment-display hooked to it. (and of course two microswitches)
Since a motorbyce normally has no reverse gear you won't need to display an "R", just 0 to 4 or 5.

Using a PIC is logical, but from my point of view it's wasted engineering work for a chip which can do far more than just counting up and down. Simple problems call for a simple solution.

To get the switches out of the way so you can't step on them inadvertantly just remove the lever, weld a notch onto the shaft and mount the switches far out of reach.

Regards

Hans