LED Modded Gauges

13

 

Sean over at LED MOD has some cool LED car mod products. I would be interested to know how the RPM changing kits sense the RPM. Is there a line that goes to the spark plug or is there some sort of data connection to the car computer? However it works the results are great!

 

You May Also Like

PIC based Serial Controlled RGB LED PWM Driver

Wireless Pan Tilt Project

PCB Trace Antenna Design

13 Comments


  1. That is insanely cool. If i ever get the OBDII cable, I might try to do something similar.


  2. Alan,
    There is usually a tach wire you can use that goes to the ECU. A lot of car security systems utilize that wire to sense when the car is in motion and shut the engine off if the alarm has not been disarmed.

    BronzeG3,
    Here is some info on the pinout of the connector: http://www.obdii.com/connector.html.

    The site doesn’t come out and say it, but the connector you need is a male 16-pin J1962. Tons of them available, for cheap.


  3. You can use a photosensor to sense when the needle goes over the 8 number, and change the color accordingly. seems simple to me.

    btw, anyone knows what the music in the first video is ?


  4. To Wolf
    the song in the first one is DDR beethoven virus (well thats what i have it as called) and i would do something like this to my car but first off i need to find a car lol.


  5. I’ve seen it in person, he attends my Scion meets every Thursday here in Vegas. There is a small controller module that has an adjustment knob allowing you to adjust the point where it flashes to red. The tC has a center tach swap done as well as the color changing needle etc.. Typically the Scion tC has the tac to the right and speedometer in the middle 😉


  6. It sounds like a comparator that uses a potentiometer to set the reference voltage. Awesome!


  7. Even though this is somewhat pointles, the aesthetic value is high and youd feel like youre driving stylish no matter what youre in. pleasant.


  9. Colour changing could be similar to the way shift lights are done


  10. Actually it doesn’t use a photo sensor. It taps into the tach signal going to the gauge cluster. This is not just for aesthetic value it has some real useful purpose. The last thing I want is a shift light mounted to my dash when a cop pulls me over. I am using my as a shift light because it is very sleeper.


  11. A lot of cars dont use a tach wire anymore. My truck doesnt. All the gauge signals are sent digitally from the PCM to the gauge cluster. To get a tach signal I would have to go to the coil.

    The easiest way i can see to do this would be to use a rpm window switch (like for nitrous applications), that way you can control when they change colors.


  12. actually, you could probably just use the voltage difference off of a cigarette lighter plug. The Gtech pro performance meter uses precision accelerometers and the variance in voltage to quite accurately calculate a vehicle’s horsepower, torque, and several other measurements. Normally when car is revving up, the alternator spins faster relative to the car’s rpm’s. all you’d have to do is make a circuit that would change the LED colors when the voltage reached a certain level. FYI, car’s vary, but the difference is typically 11v~15v.

    BTW, i don’t know much about electronics and circuits, but i’m better with vehicles, so if this sounds kinda vague or dumb, that’s why 😀


  13. Hi, the voltage difference is not used here, because alternators have circuits to make sure the tension never goes over 15v … otherwise, the voltage would be five times higher at 5k RPM than at 1k RPM

    Here, what is used is the “noise” in the voltage, to know the RPM’s of the car, because each time the alternator revs, there is a small peak in voltage, once filtered, it is useable, IIRC, powerdyn used to work using this method, which, of course, could also be used to make a LED color changing gauge … 🙂

Comments are closed.