Hi, i have an old tacho from a VW polo '94, and i have a question, is it possible to wire this up to lfs? my brother said it isn't because it's analog, so i'd thought to ask it here. Do you guys know if it is possible?


-Bose

I think you would have to modify it etc... I think Beta Innovations sell parts or just buy a tacho gauge from them.

It's been posted in the programmer's forum before, and IIRC (can't be arsed to search :shy the general consensus is that it's WAAAAY more trouble than it's worth. You'd be far better off buying a kit from Beta, and you could change over the needles/dials from the Polo one onto the Beta one.

Having said that, with a fair bit of circuit wizardry it would be possible to wire up the Polo one

It's a digital tacho? You mean four 7-segment displays next to each other? I've played with those before. It would be pretty easy to do since they're just LEDs, you just turn them on or off, whereas a real analog tachometer is like an ammeter and is driven by the amount of current going through it (much harder to do).

No, it's anolog.

Quote from Bose321 :

No, it's anolog.

This may be helpfull Bose http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=867937#post867937

demo of what can be done, usefull starting point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nggmr7WICuQ

Here in Dublin we have Maplin electronics where a usb experimental plc board can be bought for around e40, that thread explains how to get rpms to usb, all you would nee to do(in theory) is match voltage with rpm's ie. if it takes 1.2 volts to reach 1000rpm on the VW tacho this should be set on the board with a variable resistor of some sort.

There are obviously lots of kits on offer around, a bit expensive though and these projects are more fun to build than they are to use.

Good luck

Thanks CSU1, i'll read it