ssave@caen.engin.umich.edu (Shailendra Anant Save) (10/24/90)
Has anyone built a digital tachometer from parts? Here is what I have: 4 cylinder car. It has wires that go to the spark plugs. What I want: Some way of counting the RPM. How I have thought of approaching this: Method 1 Wrap a coil of wire around the spark-plug wires and get a voltage across the terminals which would be the average DC voltage. Then DC voltmeter caliberated to this, would give me the RPM. Problem: How linear is this? How accurate is this? How easy is it to caliberate the voltmeter? Method 2 Wrap a coil as above. Schmitt trigger the pulses into square waves. Gate and count the number of pulses in a time (1/10 sec). Display the count. Method 3 The fan blades are such that there is a light path between each blade. Use infra-red transmitter -- detector pair and get pulses. Count as in 2. Anyone have any experience with these? The thing is that I want digital. Analog ones available are about $35 each. I am hoping that I can make one that costs even less. Please send any other suggestions to me. Thanks, --Shailendra ssave@caen.engin.umich.edu The University of Michigan Ann Arbor.
robin@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Robin Amano) (10/26/90)
>> Anyone have any experience with these? The thing is >>that I want digital. Analog ones available are about >>$35 each. I am hoping that I can make one that costs >>even less. Good ones are more like $80 -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Robin Amano | Internet: robin@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu UHCC | 2565 The Mall | Honolulu, HI 96822