40 LED digital Tachometer.

[RalphCare]

anyone interested in one of these.. i have just finished putting the finishing touches on a 40 LED digital tachometer that reads upto 12,000 RPM via an adjuster knob which regulates input power according to your car.

i will be trying to get a digital camera to take a cheap video so i can show you guys what it looks like.. me and my pops will be trying it on the 87 Jetta (it pwnz j00, dont laugh)

there are numerous possibilities on where to place this thing, and it just looks so damn cool and its precise from mathematical measurement.

at 2000 rpm, the gate reading was dead oneven at 4000, 6000, 8000, and 10000.and all in between.. right down to .5 gate difference (i dont know exactly how much that is myself, but my dad is the electrical engineer with 35+ years experience) so i assure you it is quality.

perhaps i could make a steering column pod so that its easily installed ill have to see what my mind comes up with. or when ill actually get a hold of a 240.

lemme know if you guys are interested... and ill gauge the price by the number of people interested for now.. and then when i get feedback and business, ill have a set price or something.

[Soy]

Interesting concept - I'd love to see it in action.

Post some pics and vids!

James

[f s t caz]

ya, pics and vids would be awesome

[Poatree]

it'd be cool to have that mounted a-frame

[onosqv]

definitely interested. especially now that I have a "working" digital speedometer coming in from a wrecker. hopefully that works, then my car will be complete. hoo hoo.

pix and vids please. and if you need a place to host the pix and vids, just email me, i'll host them on my site.

o yea, cost too please, and dimensions would be great, so i can "make room"

[Silvia007]

I'm sold!

[MyCarIsWack]

sounds hott!!

[RalphCare]

that A pillar mount has to be the best idea ive heard so far.. especially since its a long tachometer.

if you guys are wondering about dimensions.. right now its on some electronic test board.. but the final should be about quarter of an inch thicker (due to plastic casing) than the whole LED strip.. which is about hmmm.. id say 4 inches, give or take a quarter.

the height should be no more than 3/4 inch.. depth, i will try to make it as compact as possible.i might even consider having the LED's as an external unit , and using a rounded IDE computer cable to make everything hook up to where the customer wants. this makes mounting it easier, and so a control box can be installed and hidden possibly within the panel that stores the cable for the trunk release, or a similar place. maybe even on the DIN panel... but im not quite sure how long an IDE cable of that size would lag up the readout. sometimes it does when dealing with longer wires like that.

we should be trying it on my dads car today, if i successfully recover from a hotel party i just had yesterday. i dont even know how im typing.

my only fear is that if i were to release these items, what would prevent someone from cracking it open and stealing the design? i will be rubbing the chip catalogue numbers off.. and possibly the resistor color bars.. but whats another way? anyone with electrical knowledge will know right away what kind of integrated circuit is used to drive visual readouts.

does anyone know of a good way? i was thinking of injecting something into the casing, so that it covers all that is in there. like a hardening foam of some sort?

[Soy]

Ralph -

unfortunately, where there's a will, there's a way. If someone REALLY wanted to reverse-engineer your LED tach, they would. The only sure-fire way to keep the technology yours is to get a patent on it, which is very costly and time consuming.

Sorry,

James

[emperor_lunchbox]

i have 2 patents pending. that is really the only way. And a patent is expensive, but think of it this way, maybe you could sell your idea to a manufacturer??? then the money you spent to get a patent will seem like nothing at all. if you want more info email me . [email protected]

[RalphCare]

i have 2 patents pending. that is really the only way. And a patent is expensive, but think of it this way, maybe you could sell your idea to a manufacturer??? then the money you spent to get a patent will seem like nothing at all. if you want more info email me . [email protected]

how expensive? and how time consuming?

[emperor_lunchbox]

the cheapest i have seen the "market analysis" is like 450$ I paid almost 3 grand. and as far as the time frame goes it depends on the company you go with. On one of the patents they took like 2 months for the market analysis and then like another month for the patent search. It is a tedious process, but in most cases worth the wait.

[Tsukai240]

your going to need an patent lawyer. if you want to be serious you have to be protected. also, try to find a sponsor/investor.

[Silvia007]

If someone is gonna reverse engineer your product after injecting a hardened resin into the casing, I think they'll have better luck trying to come up with one themselves then trying to chip away every little piece of resin to see how it's put together.

[Soy]

If someone is gonna reverse engineer your product after injecting a hardened resin into the casing, I think they'll have better luck trying to come up with one themselves then trying to chip away every little piece of resin to see how it's put together.

Agreed, especially if you're using a solid color resin, like black. However, like I said, I've seen worse happen.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about it - in fact, if you run a patent search, you'd probably find that someone else already holds a patent on a "similar" item, which wouldn't be good anyway.

James

[RalphCare]

If someone is gonna reverse engineer your product after injecting a hardened resin into the casing, I think they'll have better luck trying to come up with one themselves then trying to chip away every little piece of resin to see how it's put together.

so are you saying that my idea is good, and that it could just work?

[RalphCare]

here are some really low quality Webcam pics..

you can thank logitech for the quality

i tried to fix em up as much as possible in photoshop. (not changing, just fixing)

we've been really busy this passed week, and i cant test it yet.. but im confident it will work 99.9 percent, if not 100

[RalphCare]

another

[RalphCare]

last one for now.

and if you guys are like "hot damn, im not puttin one of thems in my car..." relax.. its only test model #2.

its about done alpha phase, and going into beta as soon as we test it in 3 or more cars with different numbers of cylinders and different rev ranges.

[lenso]

lol, breadboard...id mount that on my a pillar!