instructables

Use Arduino to Display Engine RPM

by TinkeringEngineer

This guide will outline how I used an Arduino UNO mathematical software MATLAB, and creating or
R3, a 16x2 LCD display with I2C, and an LED strip to modifying electric circuits. In the future this may be
be used as a engine speed gauge and shift light in revised to be easier to understand for someone with
my Acura Integra track car. It is written in terms of little to no experience with these topics.
someone with some experience or exposure to
Arduino software or coding in general, the

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You'll need to get a signal that correlates to engine speed. It is possible to add a system that measures engine
speed but it is far more practical to tap into an existing wire that carries engine speed information. A single car may
have multiple sources for this, and it may vary wildly even year-to-year on a single vehicle model. For the sake of
this tutorial I will be using the example of my car, a track modified 2000 Acura Integra LS. I found on my engine
(B18B1 with OBD2) there is an unused voltage out that is 12V high and drops to 0V upon completing a full
revolution.

Things that will help identify a potential engine speed signal:

Wiring diagram for your vehicle

Step 2: Extend Wire to Arduino Board

Once you have chosen a suitable signal, you'll need to extend it to wherever you are placing your Arduino board. I
decided to place mine inside the vehicle where the radio used to be, so I routed the new wire from the engine,
through a rubber grommet in the fire wall, and right to the radio area. Since there are already an abundant amount
of how-to guides on stripping, soldering, and protecting wiring I will not explain this process.

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This is where can things get complicated. Having a My signal is normally 12V and drops to 0V when
general understanding of signal analysis and controls completing one full rotation. If you know the time to
will help you a long way, but is doable with little complete one full rotation, or one full cycle, this can
knowledge. easily be translated into revolutions/min using some
basic concepts.
The signal wire chosen most likely will not be spitting
out the exact value of the engine speed. It will need to 1 / (seconds per cycle) = cycles per second, or Hz
be shaped and modified into giving the exact number
of engine RPM you want. Due to the fact every Revolutions per minute = Hz * 60
different car and signal wire chose may be different,
from this point onward I will explain how I used the
position signal from the distributor on my Integra.

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This method requires getting the time it takes for the PulseIn will return a value in microseconds, and to
input signal to complete one full cycle. Luckily the keep the math simple this should be immediately
Arduino IDE software has a command that does converted into normal seconds. Following the math
exactly that, PulseIn. on the previous step, this duration of time can be
equated directly into RPM.
This command will wait for a signal to cross a
threshold, start counting, and stop counting when the Note: after trial and error I discovered the distributor
threshold is crossed again. There are some details completes two rotations for every single rotation of
that should be noted when using the command, so I the engine crankshaft, so I simply divided my answer
will include a link to information of PulseIn here: https: by 2 to account for that.
//www.arduino.cc/en/Reference.PulseIn

Step 5: Identify a Filter

If you're lucky your signal will have no ‘noise’ came at frequencies (Hz) far higher than what the
(fluctuations) and your engine speed will be exact. In engine itself was outputting (which is true for most
my case, there was a lot of noise coming from the real dynamic systems). This means a low pass filter
distributor that often gave voltages far from what is is an ideal candidate to take care of this.
expected. This turns into very false readings of the
actual engine speed. This noise will need to be A low pass filter allows low frequencies (desired) to
filtered out. pass through and attenuates the high frequencies
(undesired).
After some signal analysis, almost all of the noise

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Designing the filter can be done by hand, however you want (must be in radians per second). The cutoff
utilizing MATLAB will speed this up significantly if you frequency is the limit where frequencies higher than it
have access to the software. will be removed and frequencies lower than it will be
kept.
A low pass filter can be equated to a transfer function
(or fraction) in the Laplace domain (frequency I set the cutoff frequency equal to an RPM my engine
domain). The input frequency will be multiplied by this will never reach (990 RPM or 165 Hz).
fraction and the output is a filtered signal that only The FFT graphs show roughly what frequencies my
has the information you want to use. raw signal were carrying and the frequencies that
came out of the filter.
The only variable in the function is tau. Tau is equal
to 1 / Omega, where Omega is the cutoff frequency

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Here MATLAB was utilized again for the sake of time. The cutoff frequency is defined, and from that the resulting
transfer function is displayed. Keep in mind this fraction only applies to the Laplace domain and cannot be directly
used on a time-based micro controller like Arduino UNO R3.

Step 8: Filtering: Part 3

MATLAB has a command that will convert a continuous function (frequency domain) into a discrete function (time
domain). The output of this command will provide an equation that can be easily incorporated into Arduino IDE
code.

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In the Arduino sketch, include the variables u and y In the loop where the conversion from the raw signal
before the setup. The float command simply defines into engine speed is taking place, include the u
how the variable will store data (things like maximum variable and the y multiple equation. There are
value, decimals, etc...) and a link to more information multiple ways of employing this, but the variable u
on this will be provided here: https://www.arduino.cc/r should be set equal to the raw input signal being
eference/en/language/varia... measured, and the variable y will be the filtered value.

Step 10: Display Your Filtered Engine Speed!

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