I've been looking at the AIM Solo 2 DL or similar. Tell me about your experiences, good and bad. Battery or Hard Wired? Swap with another bike? Setup fussy? Also, it looks like my bike is not on their "supported" list. Wonder if I can wire up a jumper harness? Bike is a 2018 KTM Duke 690. -Tom
What are your goals with using data? I have a article on my website written by a friends that goes into the basics of what you need...... http://khcoaching.com/articles/
Good question. Initially all I'm looking for is throttle position and braking pressure mapped against track location. I just want to optimize the rider at this point. Upgradeability later might be nice, but not for a season or two. -Tom
When adding data to any bike, you need to verify what's available on the CAN bus or other digital connection. If your bike doesn't send throttle position or brake pressure, you can't log it through the digital ECU lines. Throttle is often sent but brake pressure less likely. If some data isn't sent, the SoloDL does not accept any analog inputs. You'd need to buy one of their expansion modules to add an analog input such as an add-on brake pressure sensor.
With regards to brake pressure, if your bike doesn’t already put it on the can bus, an aim solo 2 dl won’t help you. I actually made this mistake, buying one thinking I would be able to log arbitrary data, but not so - you can’t add analog sensors like a brake pressure sensor to it. In order to do that you need to pony up more $ for one of the mx dash loggers, an expense I may be doing this offseason. But, hey, that means I have a 1-year used solo 2 dl that I can sell you!
@gcally It's not on the DL if you tell us in the thread... @Gravisman Agreed, where there's a will there's a way, but I prefer the elegant solution and so far "the way" seems more convoluted than I would like. I can find analog sensors for brake pressure. Reading the signal for the throttle by wire (without getting that signal from the ECU, because KTM locked that down tight) seems to be the stumbling block on my particular bike. I'm still hopeful I can pick that signal up from the PowerCommander. More research needed. -T
In another thread, someone pointed out that there is a converter that enables the DL to receive a few analogue channels. I bought one and plan to hook it up over the winter. AiM Solo 2 DL will not read ECU data through Ninja 300 KDS diag plug April Systems in the UK sells the converter.
A power commander that plugs inline with the TPS is using the analog signal. You could do the same for logging. This is AIMs analog-to-CAN expansion box. If you don’t also have an ECU connection, I wonder if you don’t need the Data Hub. https://www.aim-sportline.com/en/products/channel-expansion/index.htm
That's what got me thinking in the first place. The Power Commander just reads a signal and pushes it on (sometimes modified, sometimes not). I also found out that the Power Commander has an option to read an additional pressure sensor. In DynoJet land this was intended for a turbo pressure reading, but any analog sensor data at 0-5Vdc will be accepted by the system and passed through the Can output on the other end. Power Commander also has a head unit, but unfortunately it's not a GPS lap timer, it's just a head unit that shows air/fuel/spark data. I bought an auto-tune specifically so I wouldn't ever have to worry about that, so the PC head unit doesn't appeal to me. What does appeal to me, however, is that the PC communicates to the head unit through a Can output. So all the data and additional inputs are being packaged up very nicely by the Power Commander for export. So why wouldn't someone be able to teach an AIM to accept the data exported by the Power Commander? Too easy, right? Am I an idiot for thinking there has to be someone out there who has done it? -Tom
After a bit of research I stumbled across this article: http://pisarenko.net/blog/2017/04/16/internet-connected-motorcycle-project/ This person was able to decode the PCV signal using the built in USB port to get real time data out. This sounds promising. Now to go find out if I can teach the AIM to read the data... -Tom
That's pretty cool. I completely forgot that the PCV software is used for tuning and will stream RPM and TPS over USB. How-to's for adding a CAN bus to a RasPi are all over the internet. You need to buy a shield. But it shouldn't be too difficult to get the data in there. Then AiM should have no issue with it.
