[dorkbotpdx-blabber] Making a stationary racing machine

[Trystan Cobbett]

I'm essentially making a big electric clock. It measures how many time  
around a bicycle wheel travels and simulates distance so 1 full  
revolution of the clock's hand equals 500 meters.

This isn't any thing that revolutionary, people have made these using  
drive cables like a car's speedo or I've seen a few that just have  
projectors. I want this machine to be as analog as possible with a big  
clock face but with magnetic sensors and motors moving the hands of  
the clock.
This is also not that revolutionary, I'm copying the work of a Seattle  
based company that made one just for fun last year. They're not too  
interested in making another one but they've copied me all the info  
including the layout of their circuit boards and all the part numbers  
for every piece I should need.

The only real trouble is that I have no idea what I'm doing. I can  
make a bicycle from raw steel tubing into a machine, but when it comes  
to circuits and electricity I'm at a loss.

The company gave me the circuit board layout in a pdf but the company  
I approached said they need it in Gerber something.... A friend  
suggested that some people on this forum might be smarter than I am in  
terms of pulling something like this together, and that their might be  
an alternative to the conventional circuit boards which I'm trying to  
get made.

Anyone out there got some ideas?

Bikegeek99