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hey all. putting the finishing touches on the sport. parts should be back from paint this week and i'm hoping to ride it this weekend. thought you'd be interested to see my keyless ignition. problem is i lost the key to this bike years ago and haven't ever made another one. rode it with a simple toggle switch for a long time, but decided that this wasn't secure enough. so...

my genius coworker built me a little board and i hacked together this little system. that's the stock ignition switch connector going to a 15 amp relay. the relay is latching so if this fails while i'm riding at least it won't shut the bike off. it's potted so it's weather- and vibration-proof. it uses an ms series rf encoder/decoder for 16.7 million (2 to the 24) addresses, so the possibility of accidental conflicts extremely unlikely, but i'll prolly do another one with encryption so it's truly secure. it's really easy to program for any ms series transmitter, so losing the keyfob isn't a problem. of course this doesn't do anything for the steering lock, but the bike is almost always garaged, so that doesn't really worry me. maybe i'll get a disc lock or something.

anyway this turned out so well i'm thinking about trying to market these things. btw, i'm not trying to make any money from people on this site, but my question is: does this kind of thing interest you? if so, what kind of features would you like to see? i can program it to do all kinds of neat things. i can use a two, three, or four button remote for up to four different functions (though i can't imagine what you would need four functions for on a motorcycle). you'll see that i tied off two additional leads coming off the box. those are to drive additional relays if i think of something. the next gen device will be completely self-contained. it'll prolly have four relays on-board - one 15 amp, and three 5 amp. it should be about the size of the keyfob and weigh 1/2 ounce or so. and i figure i'll use a standard automotive five-pin headlight connector like what's on the relay, so wiring will be really easy.

my cost right now is about $50 us. technology is awesome.

ian.

Sounds good . could you have remote starting god knows why ! , but maybe remote horn would be handy if you saw someone paying a little to much attention , like maybe if your in a café or queuing for a burger and some sneaky lookin bastard is getting a bit close . I have returned to my bike to find the VIN plate pulled 1/2 off , and rego / wof stickers gone

my own experience of hot wiring my own bike for a quick test ride and in order to get to an outdoor party up in the hills resulting in six points and a £200 fine for no insurance and the 906 being taken to the pound, costing £300 release fee. the reason, no rear light due to electrical incompitence

Mc tool: keyless start is easily done, but i opted not to do it for several reasons:

1. i often park the bike in gear, which disables the start button.
2. it's a cantankerous carbureted bike with a manual choke. doesn't start without some coaxing anyway.
3. it would involve more wiring. as it is this just takes the place of the key-switch. on the other hand it would be pretty easy to use a pass-through connector on the right handlebar controls to power the starter relay.

nnnnnnorman: the keyswitch basically switches two circuits on these older bikes: ignition and everything else. there's just not that much there. of course there's a park position which just turns on a couple lights, but i elected to ignore that function (i have the additional output but i only bought the one-button remote before i thought about it - next time). and the key-switch is one area where things seems to have reasonably well standardized. plug and play.

what i REALLY want to do is add a 3-axis accelerometer and make it send me a text message if someone's messing with the bike. unfortunately i haven't thought of a good way to do that short of using a cell modem and adding it to my wireless plan for $30/month. i can build a tiny cell modem into the unit. i just can't decide if having a motorcycle as a wireless device is cool or absurd.

ian.

correction: putting the bike in gear does NOT disable the start button, which is even worse: i have nightmare visions of the bike jumping off its little toothpick side-stand in an attempt to start itself. *shivers*

ian.