Reading RPM's,etc, and sending them to a smartphone.

Hello everyone, im very new and very excited to the arduino world.
Ill go look for a starter kit to buy here in Milan tomorrow, but i had a feasability question in the meantime.
I work on old motorcycles, and i had in mind to try and build an additional "brain" based on arduino to handle some additional checks/controls.
I wont bore you with the list that is going around in my head but i have a question in particular regarding rpm reading.

I have in mind to remove the original instruments (speedometer, temperature, rpm's, neutral, blinkers and oil pressure) and replace them with an app on my smartphone (windows 8 os).
I can pull the speed via gps so that isnt an issue (also pulling it from the bike without keeping the original instrument in place might prove a challenge) but can arduino read those other signals, interpret them and communicate them to a smartphone's app via bluetooth/wifi? I cant immagine reading them being much of a problem, especially considering that 30 year old bikes dont have a very complicated signal system, but im more concerned about the communication.

I was also thinking about a gps/sms allarm system, but i think guides for those are already around the forums.

I realize this isnt an easy answer nor do i require detailed explenations, i just wanted to know if this was doable and not extremely hard.

Thank you.

Hi FezMonki, If you could, let us know how you handle dropping the 12V high frequency square wave signals down to five volts for the Arduino.
As far as the feasibility goes, this is entirely possible. Just be aware that you need to engineer the system well in advance, at least the topmost layer.
You will need to check the resource requirements of all of the different shields you plan to use (3G, GPS) or the combination 3G/GPS shield, and then figure out how many PWM, Analog, and Digital I/O pins you will need to drive everything you plan to do. This will point you in the direction of which chip to purchase.

An oscilloscope will help you greatly, and save many headaches in figuring out what the ECU is trying to encode.
Note that if you use Arduino Uno and the FreqCounter Library, you are constrained to Pin 5. (one channel for analyzing).
The other option is pulseIn(), which is less precise and has a more narrow range than what the FreqCounter Library can do, but can be used on any digital input pin.

Have fun!

flylikechris:
Hi FezMonki, If you could, let us know how you handle dropping the 12V high frequency square wave signals down to five volts for the Arduino.

Check out this recent thread:

forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=185066