The special feature is the handling with very small markers , down to some pixel for the radius. By order of Volkswagen AG a speed counter for car motors has been developed, which works independently from the electrical systems using a inductive sensor at the generator. So the counter is appropriate for any spark ignition and diesel engine with an arbitrary number of cylinders. During self-calibration the transfer factor from generator to engine speed is automatically determined by evaluation of the speed drop being characteristic for combustion engines. The operating system is Linux.
Signal acquisition is done through the on-board sound chip.
For the generation of analog and digital output signals deduced from speed, different components in PC-104 technique are integrated in the handy system case. The data includes actual values of relevant physical quantities like temperatures, pressures etc. as well as error messages from the motor control system. The logged data is stored on a Flash Memory Card to be fed into a Laptop for analysis. Extending the basic functionality of the logger, software for the generation of virtual instruments showing actual process data has been developed. The software is dedicated to run on a panel PC, requiring slight resources.