Change taco needle colour with engine RPM

**trillion** · 12-23-2004, 03:34 AM

A tacho/speedo whose needle changes colour while in a certain rev range. ie from 0-2500rpm needle is white; 2500-5000 needle is purple; 5000-few hundred rpm below redline needle is orange and above that would obviously be a red needle. I borrowed the idea from an episode of Top Gear where they reviewed a 70,000pound beast.

Would probably be best applied to the OBD dashboard projects going on.

Anyone have the programming skills to know where to start? Any DirectX programmers reading?

**OdysseyPC** · 12-23-2004, 03:57 AM

Originally Posted by trillion

Would probably be best applied to the ODB dashboard projects going on.

Anyone have the programming skills to know where to start? Any DirectX programmers reading?

I'm guessing you mean a software speedo??

If so that's a fairly simple implementation, i'm sure those working on the digital guages could support that easily.

**trillion** · 12-23-2004, 04:10 AM

**Diewlay Lowmo** · 12-23-2004, 04:28 AM

So sick.

**Scouse Monkey** · 12-23-2004, 05:45 AM

Thats easy, just have a multicoloured LED in the root of the needle and a switches that are activated when the needle passes them - eg rotory encoder onthe back or something

**frodobaggins** · 12-23-2004, 01:51 PM

I prefer my taco's without needles thank you.
Hot sauce is much better for that extra kick.

**danon** · 12-23-2004, 02:02 PM

would be nice to see the color morphing in between and not just switching.

**integramodder** · 12-23-2004, 02:09 PM

Use something like all the recent pens and such use that switch colors. 3 or 4 leds that light up by themselves and in union with the others to create several colors...

**integramodder** · 12-23-2004, 02:15 PM

A friend of mine had one of these ice cubes that change colors....pretty cool
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=4345852861

**greenwire** · 12-28-2004, 06:19 AM

just do it mechanically
get a couple 3mm or surface mount high-output LEDs and arrange them so that the tach needle gets lit up by them successively.

Like, have the red one pointing at the right angle for the redline, and the purple one next to it so it lights the needle up that way and so on.. (i'd post drawings but you guys can figure it out)