cockpito
Registered user
The R1100GS is indeed a great bike. It is so good that I have just bought my second R1100GS (the first one sold it a few years ago, and that's right in my list of stupid decisions I made).
Lately, I have been buying a bike every year to making a radical customization, then take her for a trip and finally let her go after summer time. This time my GS is here for good, but I still needed to do something radical with her.
I'm sure I will hurt someone's feelings here, but as much as I love this bike, there are two things I strongly dislike about them. First, the frightened mosquito look on her face. That big squared headlight looks like stolen from some ugly car from the 80s, plus that long nose and silly windscreen. Second, the dashboard. The poor thing is so ugly.
The first part was cheap and quick. I made my own twin headlights, replaced the windscreen with a clear, longer version made in the UK, and replaced the long nose by a shorter one made in Germany. It is not a great look, but it is a lot less ugly than before.
The second part is fun. I simply build a custom dashboard on a custom metal frame, plus an acrylic cover. Inside, I have Raspberry Pi computer, a GPS, a USB 3G dongle and a custom circuit board I made for interfacing 12v signals against the computer's GPIO ports.
I still need to make a few changes and I have a long to do list in the software, but at least it is a lot more functional and looks much nicer. These are the new features, which were unavailable in the original dashboard:
- Latitude, longitude, real speed and altitude
- City database. Contains 400,000 cities from all over the world. I found them in some free excel file, which I massaged and imported into the built in SQLite database.
- Distance to selected cities. A list of up to nine cities can be selected and it is displayed along with the current distance in real time.
- GPS logging. It simply writes every single GPS reading into the database, which then I can export to GPX (or any format I want)
- Large gear display. The original was quite small. I interfaced the three 12v lines to the GPIO ports and I show the gear number in my display.
- Motronic alarms. I wired the 12v diagnostics line from the Motronic to one of the GPIO ports. The diagnostics computer is ridiculously expensive, and reading a blinking led or a jumping analog tester needle simply sucks. My dashboard, instead, can display any errors in plain English.
- SMS position updates. GPRS/3G is not available in all countries and roaming charges could be painful. However, sending an SMS message is cheap and works mostly all over the world. El Cockpito sends automatic updates via SMS to an SMS gateway (which then is forwarded to an email and catched by my server). These updates can be defined every X kilometers and/or every time the speed reaches zero. I can also send an SOS update at anytime.
- Single button operation. There is a single button on the left that I can press to switch modes.
- Indicator lamps are all replaced by LEDs
Things I have lost with the change:
- Tachometer. However, I might add it in the future. It won't be a big deal to count pulses, I think.
- Oil temperature and fuel level. However, this is work in process since I am wiring these to an analog/digital converter card for the Raspberry PI.
Some pictures follow below...
Lately, I have been buying a bike every year to making a radical customization, then take her for a trip and finally let her go after summer time. This time my GS is here for good, but I still needed to do something radical with her.
I'm sure I will hurt someone's feelings here, but as much as I love this bike, there are two things I strongly dislike about them. First, the frightened mosquito look on her face. That big squared headlight looks like stolen from some ugly car from the 80s, plus that long nose and silly windscreen. Second, the dashboard. The poor thing is so ugly.
The first part was cheap and quick. I made my own twin headlights, replaced the windscreen with a clear, longer version made in the UK, and replaced the long nose by a shorter one made in Germany. It is not a great look, but it is a lot less ugly than before.
The second part is fun. I simply build a custom dashboard on a custom metal frame, plus an acrylic cover. Inside, I have Raspberry Pi computer, a GPS, a USB 3G dongle and a custom circuit board I made for interfacing 12v signals against the computer's GPIO ports.
I still need to make a few changes and I have a long to do list in the software, but at least it is a lot more functional and looks much nicer. These are the new features, which were unavailable in the original dashboard:
- Latitude, longitude, real speed and altitude
- City database. Contains 400,000 cities from all over the world. I found them in some free excel file, which I massaged and imported into the built in SQLite database.
- Distance to selected cities. A list of up to nine cities can be selected and it is displayed along with the current distance in real time.
- GPS logging. It simply writes every single GPS reading into the database, which then I can export to GPX (or any format I want)
- Large gear display. The original was quite small. I interfaced the three 12v lines to the GPIO ports and I show the gear number in my display.
- Motronic alarms. I wired the 12v diagnostics line from the Motronic to one of the GPIO ports. The diagnostics computer is ridiculously expensive, and reading a blinking led or a jumping analog tester needle simply sucks. My dashboard, instead, can display any errors in plain English.
- SMS position updates. GPRS/3G is not available in all countries and roaming charges could be painful. However, sending an SMS message is cheap and works mostly all over the world. El Cockpito sends automatic updates via SMS to an SMS gateway (which then is forwarded to an email and catched by my server). These updates can be defined every X kilometers and/or every time the speed reaches zero. I can also send an SOS update at anytime.
- Single button operation. There is a single button on the left that I can press to switch modes.
- Indicator lamps are all replaced by LEDs
Things I have lost with the change:
- Tachometer. However, I might add it in the future. It won't be a big deal to count pulses, I think.
- Oil temperature and fuel level. However, this is work in process since I am wiring these to an analog/digital converter card for the Raspberry PI.
Some pictures follow below...
. I wonder where he went with his GPS and 3g dongle ? 
