DucatiBoy Circuit Ordering Discussion Thread

[wishbone]

Done.. thanks for doing this!! I've been battling with the bypass for awhile so I'm glad to see someone make it that much easier. Thanks again.

[ducatiboy]

Ok we already have had one person try to use a credit card to pay me for these. I thought I was clear in my post above. Please don't take this to be mean, and I don't want to come off as a schmuck either. So if it does I apologize.

If you use paypal and try to use a credit card to get one of these (at this time) your payment will be denied by me. I'm not set up to take credit cards and if I upgrade to a business account it will cost me for every transfer and I'm not doing that at this time. I may some time in the future if this takes off.... but at this time, bank transfers only.

Sorry. If you only have paypal with a creidt card, then PM me and I'll send you an address to mail me a check.

I know this might sound like a small time operation (not taking credit cards and all)... well it is. It's just me and I normally don't sell anything over the internet. :)

And if you want to know how dedicated to you people I am, in order to test this as much as possible and get these out as fast as possible, it's 80 deg and sunny here in lovely NJ and I'm leaving the bike at home and taking the truck, just to test as much as possible. See how dedicated I am? :)

[dj2ndnature]

Just placed my order, hopefully I'm one of the 17!
I actually get my Z1 in a couple weeks so no rush. Hopefully the car shop will know what to do with it. They are aware of the lights trick so that's a plus.
Thanks!

[ducatiboy]

[quote name="dj2ndnature"]Just placed my order, hopefully I'm one of the 17!
I actually get my Z1 in a couple weeks so no rush. Hopefully the car shop will know what to do with it. They are aware of the lights trick so that's a plus.
Thanks![/quote]

Well, you don't have to worry. I only have 17 set for this initial "prototype" run, but since this looks like it's more popular than 17 I'm planning on a second run. If you are one of the first 17 I will ship them out next week. If you want one and send me money and you miss the first 17 (so far I have 8 orders), worse case is that I will not ship those till the week after. But I want to get the first run of boards in to make sure everything works.

If you sent a check to me please PM me I know people said they were sending checks, but then I set up paypal and some people changed... I'm starting to get confused. If you already sent out a check, please let me know.

[palter]

Have you considered selling it as a board and parts kit, or board and part list
for those of us good with building this type of thing? It might make things
easier for you....




Bill

[ducatiboy]

[quote name="palter"]Have you considered selling it as a board and parts kit, or board and part list
for those of us good with building this type of thing? It might make things
easier for you....

Bill[/quote]

It would be easier for me, but at the moment would cost the same. So I don't know if anyone would want it. I'm probably going to have to bump up the price after these first 17 orders are done. The parts are all surface mount and very small (to get the size of this small, I was going for roubst not a low parts count). And there is a PIC with sepcial code, so a part list might be tough, cause you would need something to flash the processor with code. A parts kit might work too, but it might be as much work to collect the parts into bags and such and label them as it is to solder them.

[ducatiboy]

Here are the instructions for the installation of the headlight flasher module. Is this easy to understand? Look simple enough?

You might need to be registered to see the attached picture.

Here it is spelled out:

Connect the head unit exactly as described in your installation manual.

Cut the line going to the illumination wire.

Connect the white line from the head light flasher to the illumination line which came from the car.

Connect the orange wire to the illumination line which is going to the head unit.

Connect the red wire to the 12 Volt switched line

Connect the black wire to ground.

if you use your parking brake, you will want to leave that floating. If it's grounded (hooked correctly and the parking brake is on) the headlight flashing won't work. I have an automatic and never use the parking brake. If you use it, then just leave that line floating and tape it up. That way if you do use your parking brake it won't mess with what you did by flashing your headlights. Or put it on a toggle switch and normally leave it not connected to anything but when you switch the toggle switch it will connect it to ground.

[edrock200]

Wow thanks for putting this together ducatiboy!

[rotorhead7]

Ducatiboy,
why not add a diode at the brain so the actual car lights won't even flash? The HU will be the only part get gets the 'flashed' input.

[ducatiboy]

[quote name="rotorhead7"]Ducatiboy,
why not add a diode at the brain so the actual car lights won't even flash? The HU will be the only part get gets the 'flashed' input.[/quote]

The headlights don't get "flashed". The "white" wire which goes to the car's wiring is a sense only wire (I designed the circuit to be very benign so it won't effect any of the car's systems with this installed). Nothing gets sent back into the car's electrical system. The orange wire from my circuit is the out line. I "fake" a headlight flash out on the orange wire, and after 10 seconds I "pass thought" what is sensed on the white input wire. No "diode" needed.

And most of the more modern cars have a dimmer control circuit in them so that when you turn on the headlights, those dimmer control circuits will see the headlights on and output a signal 0v-12v and change the duty cycle depending on your dimmer settings. If you back fed 12V into that, depending on the dimmer circuit, worse case you would hurt that circuit (maybe fry it) but I doubt it would turn the headlights on backwards through a car's dimmer circuit. I still designed my circuit to not backfeed anything back into what ever might be back in there. I believe it should be safe for any car (12V on all the time, 0v-12v signal, or a changing voltage, no matter what your car might have for a dimmer control, this will sense it and pass through an signal to the head unit).

[ducatiboy]

Just to re-iterate (since I got a PM or two on this issue):


My circuit will not actually flash your lights. Your headlights will not come on, your car won't know anything is hooked to it at all.

I was calling it a "light flasher" not cause it actually flashes your lights, but it makes your head unit think you did.

It does absolutely nothing to your car (other than draw about 5 miliamps of power, about the same amount an LED does in a remote control). When you first turn your car on, it will simulate the signal the head unit would normally see if you flashed your headlights. After 10 seconds have gone by, it watches what your lights are doing wether they are on or off. It does nothing to the car, it just watches. It then copies what your car is doing (have your lights on or off) and relays that signal to your head unit.

Make sense? I designed this circuit with a few more parts than absolutely necessary, which made it a bit bigger and more expensive for me, but it also make it quite a bit more robust against weird signals and voltage spikes and so on. I also did quite a lot of work (signal processing) in software on the processor so that I believe it will be compatible with every car out there. And won't hurt the car itself or any of your electronics if it's installed correctly. I also wanted to make it as fool proof of an install as possible.

Does that clear things up and make people feel better? :)

[wishbone]

So my confusion this far:

With the bypass/this circuit/whatever do you have to ground the brake wire? Do you need to do anything extra when using it or will it just work all the time? I tried to search through the now huge thread on this but it seems like different people are reporting different things.

[05Stang-GT]

I don't think it matters if it is grounded or not. In my case I have it grounded and the turn on/off head lights trick works so Im sure this circuit will work with it grounded as well because all it is doing is simulating this same event.

[ducatiboy]

[quote name="wishbone"]So my confusion this far:

With the bypass/this circuit/whatever do you have to ground the brake wire? Do you need to do anything extra when using it or will it just work all the time? I tried to search through the now huge thread on this but it seems like different people are reporting different things.[/quote]

If you ground it all the time, you will need to bypass the lockouts EVERY time you start the car. If you don't do the bypass one time and you try to do something like watch a dvd or something (with the parking brake grounded) then it will pop up that warning and that warning (about not having the parking brake correctly connected) will come up every time you start the car (it might not come up if you do the bypass on future start ups). I'm pretty sure this will happen, every part wasn't 100% tested by me.

If you connect the Z1 like the instructions say (grounded only when the parking brake is on) when you do the bypass you won't need to ground it. If you don't do the bypass one time, the worse thing that will happen would be that some features are locked out while moving and parking brake is off.

I was trying to access locked out features while moving one time, without bypassing them just having the parking brake permanently grounded and I got that "warning message" and it would come up every time I started the car and the only way to get rid of it was to reset the whole unit, even after I hooked up the parking brake like it's supposed to be installed. I still had to reset the unit.

I would recommend connecting the parking brake the way the instructions say to (or on a toggle switch under the dash). You don't need it grounded all the time to bypass any lockouts. And if you do need it some time you can activate it or not.

[wishbone]

[quote name="ducatiboy"] [quote name="wishbone"]So my confusion this far:

With the bypass/this circuit/whatever do you have to ground the brake wire? Do you need to do anything extra when using it or will it just work all the time? I tried to search through the now huge thread on this but it seems like different people are reporting different things.[/quote]

If you ground it all the time, you will need to bypass the lockouts EVERY time you start the car. If you don't do the bypass one time and you try to do something like watch a dvd or something (with the parking brake grounded) then it will pop up that warning and that warning (about not having the parking brake correctly connected) will come up every time you start the car (it might not come up if you do the bypass on future start ups). I'm pretty sure this will happen, every part wasn't 100% tested by me.

If you connect the Z1 like the instructions say (grounded only when the parking brake is on) when you do the bypass you won't need to ground it. If you don't do the bypass one time, the worse thing that will happen would be that some features are locked out while moving and parking brake is off.

I was trying to access locked out features while moving one time, without bypassing them just having the parking brake permanently grounded and I got that "warning message" and it would come up every time I started the car and the only way to get rid of it was to reset the whole unit, even after I hooked up the parking brake like it's supposed to be installed. I still had to reset the unit.

I would recommend connecting the parking brake the way the instructions say to (or on a toggle switch under the dash). You don't need it grounded all the time to bypass any lockouts. And if you do need it some time you can activate it or not.[/quote]

Yeah I've already tested the other possibilities of severing connections to the speed wire and leaving the ebrake grounded and none of them work for very long. What I'm hoping is with this bypass I can leave everything opportating as it should and have access to all the features of my unit while in motion regardless of whether or not the ebrake is on/off or I'm moving or not. Am I correct in understanding if I perform the bypass (or use your circuit at all times) it will just work regardless of what the other sensors (gps, speed, ebrake, gyro) are doing?