----------------------------------- ecookman Mon Dec 05, 2011 10:55 pm Tachometer help needed. [looking for car geeks and circuit geeks] ----------------------------------- My friend and I are restoring a 1996 Chevy S-10, body work, rebuild engine, clean up the interior the works basically. One thing that we'd both like to see go into the truck is a Tachometer as the dime doesn't have one [manual tranny]. I thought up a cool idea of making a custom one up on the dash made up of LED's. [Higher the RPM's the more LED's go on like a Tach you'd find in a racing car]. I honestly have 0 clue on how I would begin to interface the circuit or what I would need to start building the circuit. Any ideas? ----------------------------------- Tony Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:03 pm RE:Tachometer help needed. [looking for car geeks and circuit geeks] ----------------------------------- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_encoder ----------------------------------- chrisbrown Tue Dec 06, 2011 6:52 pm Re: Tachometer help needed. [looking for car geeks and circuit geeks] ----------------------------------- If you want a 16-LED display (say 9 green, 4 yellow, 3 red), you could use two 8-line demultiplexers in parallel. For your controller you could use an arduino with a proto shield on top. It just needs a 5-12v DC supply. Tony, I think a magnetic sensor might be less trouble than would be mounting an encoder securely and precisely, especially since angular position isn't important (unless the guy is a REAL car nut). ----------------------------------- ecookman Tue Dec 06, 2011 10:08 pm RE:Tachometer help needed. [looking for car geeks and circuit geeks] ----------------------------------- Yeah I think I'm going to do a 16 Led display as cb said, and I think I'm going to use a magnet sensor off one of the spark plugs. I'm going to look into the Ic's and start to do up a drawing lol. thanks for the start. -------------edit------------ Yea, this project is way over my budget. Thanks for the help anyway was fun to learn about this stuff :p