neos said:
I can imagine a lot and if I had unlimited time and money, I also could do a lot.
Unfortunately I don't have that, therefore I was searching for a pragmatic solution that can be
implemented in a manageable amount of time.
ok. well, the most pragmatic solution in the quickest time (would probably take me a day or less if i needed to do it on the trike; i'm no longer all that good with my hands and can't see all that well up close) is magnetic switches either in series with or in place of the switches for the ca front panel and any preset switch(es) you use. it's easy, direct, and if you poke around there are threads where people have done this that you could use as examples.
And if this is only feasible with the CA by investing excessive effort in it, probably the CA isn't the
right display for me.
well, the ca is not a display. i mean, it has a display, but that's not it's purpose.
it is a complete computer that lets you take a bunch of inputs and then create a throttle signal from those based on your settings within it. it also keeps track of battery usage and bike mileage/speed/etc.
if that's what you want, its' the only one of it's kind out there i know of, except for a diy project recently posted up here on es that is more complicated and larger that doesn't come in a bike-mountable case.
if it's not what you want, then it's not the right item for you.
if all you want is a display, then you must get the one that is specifically compatible with the exact controller you already have, or one you will replace that with, because just the displays for controllers are not inter-compatible with all controllers; they're specific to brand and model and even version in various cases.
there are things like the kt kun teng kunteng controller that have versions compatible with the opensource firmware by casainho / stancecoke /etc., listed in threads here on es. they've also made osfw for some of the displays compatible with those controllers. yo'ud have to look at those threads to find out if they already ahve the features you want, and which specific hardware you'd need to get those features.
since it is opensource, you could branch it off and code in the password / etc stuff you want.
however, i'm not aware of any controllers (with or without displays) you can buy for "kit use", building your own bike from them, that have passwords / etc in them to do what you want to do (some have passwords to prevent user access to some settings, but i don't know that they do it for secure startup access. i haven't seen them all, by far, so there could be some out there....).
I don't know where I mentioned that this would be the perfect solution to protect you bike against theft?
you didn't. i was just pointing it out, because there are lots of people that don't normally ride bicycles taht come here to es for help setting one up, and have no idea how common bike theft is and how hard it is to thwart it. very very few poeple give us any info on their previous experiences (or pretty much anything else, including the stuff we need to know to help them), so i try to err on the side of providing more information than they might need, than not enough.
In my opinion, a hardware solution wouldn't be a good compromise, because it has to be durable
against mechanical and weather stress, which make such a solution always difficult to implement and prone to failures.
Therefore a software solution would be preferable.
i see your point.
to be fair, the magnetic switches (hidden inside the ca casing, or the preset switch casing, or even inside the wiring harness), are easy to make weatherproof and mechanical-stress-resistant.
there have been other solutions (some in software running on hardware outside the display/controller system, some wiht ca's some not) posted around es if you choose to look around for them.
The problem is, there is no free sdk or api for the CA that I know of.
no, there isn't, because it's all hand-made machine-level code; i expect that even if it were publicly available, that unless someone knows the code inside-out they wouldn't be able to make any kind of changes to it without causing all sorts of changes across the whole program. (but i'm not a programmer, just know the concepts)
they'll make you custom changes to the firmware, starting at $1000, dependng on what you want if it's possible...but it is a tiny mcu with not much memory, and afaik it's always jsut about full, so wheenver they add new things they have to change or remove other things. they've talked about a new hardware version, with new software/features/etc., but haven't heard a thing about that in quite a while.
