Troubles with Acumen PD8 Gear Indicator

Dear Friends,

I consider myself pretty good with mechanics and electronics.
I cannot design a circuit, but I can fix anything in the house,
fix most things with the VFR, etc, and I can certainly solder and do kits, etc.

Recently I had purchased an Acumen gear indicator which I installed.
It has five wires, and they go somewhere behind the console of our VFR.
Not difficult to install, just getting to those wires can be a pain as you have to take apart many sections of the fairing and console.

Anyway, I installed my gear indicator, but noticed that one of the segments of the LED display failed to come on. After some emails with the company, I sent the unit back, and got a replacement.

I installed and trained the replacement unit for the VFR.
It worked well for two weeks, then developed problems..

While I was riding, the display changed to a "turning"
icon, as if I'm starting the bike (it seems to display the same thing while running the starter). When I was going fast, it would sometimes just display a dash, nothing else.

So, I tried to re-train it, both on the road, and on the centerstand.
It goes great until the 3rd gear, but refuses to go any higher.
Here is what I did:

* Start the bike at neutral,
* Push and hold the programming button until "L" ,
* Push it six times so that it reads 6,
* Then it displays 0,
* I put it in first, go up to 2000RPM, displays 2,
* I put it in neutral, displays 2,
* put it in two, rpm to 2000-3000, blinks and then goes to 3,
* put it in three, rpm to 2000-3000, slow blinks at 3, forever.

So it will not advance beyond 3.. I pretty much faithfully followed
the recommendations (color codes, etc), and soldered all my connections.

So, I took the bike apart again, checked all the connections, wires, etc..

My feeling is that the software on this DG8 is different than the one I had before, it has now gotten exceedingly difficult to train it.

Training gear one, neutral, and gear two go very smoothly, just like before - in fact, it "learns" these gears at 1100 RPM, before I have a chance to throttle the bike to 2000-4000 RPM range. (1100 RPM is the idling speed of my Honda VFR VTEC '08. )

However, as soon as I switch to 3rd gear, the digit 3 stays blinking forever at its slow blink rate, it never finishes learning the 3rd gear. I tried all combinations, and a few times I was able to "cheat" it to go to 4,5 and 6. Mainly by pulling the clutch and slowing/stopping the bike, and then revving it up again.
I also tried throttling the bike to 2000 RPM before letting out the clutch, but I again got stuck at blinking 3.

After ten training sessions, I obtained the "best" learning, which is not much:
I now have two 5th gears: While I'm riding, if I shift from 3rd gear to 4th, it now displays 5.
If I shift up again, it still displays 5. If I shift up again, it hesitates between displaying 5 and 6.
Sigh! It still displays the animated round circle once in a great while.

I emailed the company twice about that, but never heard back from them.

So, if you are considering getting one of these units, make sure not to get a dud like mine

-turgut
PS: My apologies for a very detailed post -- I used excerpts from my emails to the company in this message.

 

Thanks for the post, I was going to buy one of these but not anymore.

 

I don't want to stop anyone from getting one, perhaps I have just been unlucky, or I did something wrong with the wiring. I'll update this post when/if I hear from the company. -turgut