Designing a Handlebar-Mounted Button Enclosure

v3

I'm working on the third version of my motorcycle-mounted button enclosure. Previous designs have been inelegant and too complicated to be able to produce multiple units affordably.

The idea of optimizing the design and workflow to be able to profitably produce and sell these as a physical product has been exciting and highly motivating.

I'm not sure there's any money to be made here, especially given the number of cheap alternatives available on Amazon, but I find myself strangely obsessed with designing physical products.

I often find myself daydreaming and designing 3D models in my head. Or coming up with ideas and solutions to physical-world challenges as I fall asleep at night. It feels like a realm I was made to operate in, more so than the fully-virtual world of my day-to-day programming work.

Rendering various materials and colors in Fusion 360 is a lot of fun – I wish I could produce results like this at home! The 3D-printed product won't look nearly as nice, but it'll be functional.

v2

This second version was short-lived due to it's overly-complex and ugly design. The top face looks decent, but the rest of it is bulky and awkwardly shaped.

Though a benefit of this design is that only one bolt is required to secure it to the handlebars, since one end of the clamp is a hook/hinge that gets inserted into the top piece.

Another major change with this design was the decision to separate the PCB from the button, which allows for a much smaller button enclosure and clamp design. A set of wires run from the button to the garage door opener PCB, which is stashed under the motorcycle plastics by the battery.

Separating the button from the PCB also makes my clamping button enclosure more versatile. It could be used to control many other motorcycle or bicycle accessories.

v1

The first design was essentially a large rectangular box that held the garage door opener PCB, combined with a separate clamp component. This design was quite bulky and difficult to make waterproof due to the designed-in button cutout in the lid.