I'm trying to learn how to convert a 2015 Honda Grom to electric. I am a complete electronics noob.
Some pointers then:
What do you want it to do for you, under what conditions? Meaning, how quick does it have to accelerate to what speed up how steep a hill for how long against what winds on what road conditions, etc?
Defining these will help you figure out the power required to do this job, and then use that to make sure you buy parts capable of this, and also not waste money on parts that are so far beyond your needs that you'll never use the capabilities you paid for.
Not having used anything from this company, a glance thru their websie shows it is likely that the kits they have are well-tested to work together, and easy to hookup, and presumably the controllers come preprogrammed to work with the stuff in the kit to it's best power output. You may still need to run the computer (or phone) based setup program/app to set various things specific to your usage or conditions; that's something you can ask them about, to make sure you get the correct programming cable or BT board/etc for the controller and/or display, along with the software. It's a good idea to have those anyway, so you can backup all the factory settings both to a file and taking pictures of all the screens, so that if you need to change something later, or replace a part, you can reset the settings to factory as required without having to send it back to the company for them to do this. (keeping in mind that setup software for controllers in general is poorly translated and has poor terminology even in the original Chinese it's usually written in, so figuring out exactly which things are which may require some research on what others have tested them to be for, and possibly some guesswork and experimentation).
You should note that the kit you link says it is for *large wheel* motorcycles, which the grom is not, so you will probably need to get different sprockets than come with it to get whatever speeds it advertises (otherwise you'll have more torque but less speed by whatever ratio your wheels are smaller than those the kit is intended for).
You could also run your intended use by their support people to make sure they think the kit would work well for your application, and if not have them advise if something else they have would work better.
I was also going to pick up their EMX 12A charger for the battery, but open to ideas for charging.
How fast do you need to charge?
What is the maximum charging rate of the battery?
Do you need to charge while out and about, or only at the bike's home location? (the former is best done with a built-in charger on the bike, that is waterproof and vibrationproof, most easily done reliably using a potted sealed charger).
Would love to utilize the expertise from the good folks in these forums for the various necessities such as the shunt (do i need this with DKD display?), dc to dc converter, pre-charge resistor, etc.
If the shunt is something they sell with the kit, then it is probably required for all the functions the kit advertises to work.
Controllers have current-measuring devices built into them, so they can do this without an external one, but if the display doesnt communicate with the controller to get this data from it then it may need an external one to display battery amps and watts, etc., or display Wh/mile (if it also has a speedometer), which is all useful information in troubleshooting and range determination, if not in everyday normal usage.
Precharge resistor value will depend on the controller capacitance (not listed on them, you have to measure it or ask the seller or manufacturer, or open it up and total what's printed on the biggest capacitors) and how long you want to take at each precharge / turn on. Precharge methods vary, there are quite a few threads (including several recent build threads for motorcycle-size EVs) that discuss ways to do it, so you can decide which one you want to use, if any.
DC-DC depends on what you want to run off of it. If you're using automotive-voltage lighting, horns, etc., you'd need to total up the power it all takes and make sure to get a 13.6v output version that can handle at least several times the amps you think you'll need, because horns often have a huge surge current at turn on before they settle down (on a lead-acid battery it doesn't matter, but for any active electronics it does), and so do halogen or other non-LED lighting solutions. (and cheaper generic DC-DCs too-often can't actually handle the current they say they can, not continuously).
There is more detail on each of these things in various other build threads; Eastwood's and harrisonpatm's are a couple of ongoiong examples I can think of, but there are plenty of them.
