Another two parter, adding a sequential shift light to the KAYO.

Ever since I first started the engine, I knew I wanted something better than a simple tachometer on this bike. After revving it a little more, it was clear the stock tach. was not going to be up to the task. There was a lot of delay between cracking the throttle, and the pointer moving. That started to quest for something better. You don't really need a tack too much once you are on the track, so a sequential shift light seemed like a good idea. You can set the lights to first come on once you are in the power band, and then blink when you are at the end of the power band and it's time to shift to the next gear. After looking around a lot, the best choice I could find was the product designed by Chippernut.  This is an open source, and open hardware device, seems to be highly flexible, and is one of the easiest to program your points and colors. After talking to Jon a few months ago about the possibility of this working on my KAYO, he mentioned that he had a new version coming. That version is now out as the version 3. Finding it was available, I bought a kit to use for testing. It arrived pretty fast and I sat down to build it... But of course building it exactly to the directions wasn't something I could do. Took a couple of nights to look at everything and mocked things up before soldering, then decided on a plan and went to work.

Here it is after soldering. I moved a few components to the bottom of the board, this allowed me to lower a few other components which was needed for the next part. I moved the rotary encoder to the side of the box because I think it will work better over there, and the "normal" position would get in the way of the next step. In order to make it more compact, I machined the flat closer to the encoder. I'll need to cut the shaft shorter to finish the job.

Next was the LEDs, decided to attach them on the inside of the lid. This required carefully cutting the strip, and soldering wires between the sections. Hopefully this will hold up. I first exposed the adhesive and stuck them to some card stock to hold them in place/shape while I worked and so I knew they would fit in the lid when I was finished. Just a bunch of hot glue holding them into the lid.

And here it is with the lights on.

Here is a video the creator made on this new version of the shift light. Pretty much explains how it all works and what it can do.

Next is the hard part... The KAYO tach. is driven by a negative 200 volt sawtooth pulse, the Chippernut (and pretty much all other shift lights) need a positive squarewave or pulse, and need it to be in the 5 volt or 12 volt range. I've managed to make a simple resistor based voltage divider to bring the voltage down to around 5 volts, just need to invert it to hook it up. The other hard part is that it's only 30 degrees F outside right now, I'd need to change to some very large jets to even getting it running. Testing for this part will need to wait until warmer times. And that's when part 2 will be written and posted.