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How Necessary Is A Voltmeter?


enzed_viffer

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That suks Swimmer

Even Cheap stuff ouught to last more than a day >G<

That was my thought. Oh well, it was a beautiful 15 minutes of functionality we spent together that I shall always hold close to my heart.

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  • 7 months later...

I have a Signal Dynamics Voltmeter too but got a thing for keeping a stock appearance. Since my VFR isn't ABS there was an empty space on the right idiot bar so I got a little...creative.14TheGOAL.jpg

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I have a Signal Dynamics Voltmeter too but got a thing for keeping a stock appearance. Since my VFR isn't ABS there was an empty space on the right idiot bar so I got a little...creative.14TheGOAL.jpg

You got so creative that for the life of me I can't see it. Is it hiding in plain site, or should I get my eyes checked?

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This meter is pretty common and found on all electronic stores.

2284520610099738507S600x600Q85.jpg

I had this exact multimeter on my old bike (Aprilia Pegaso) and it was working flawlessly even after I sold the bike on.

In fact I got so used to checking the voltage and temperatures that when I got the VFR I was looking for a similar meter.

I would go for the same but I didn't care for the time display, particularly as it lost its settings quite often (eg whenever there was a drop in voltage).

Also, I am a big fan of inverted displays, where the background is black and the digits are showing in color.

Something like this:

KM01-BKB.jpg

Strangely I must be one of the few people that likes them, as finding any type of gadget with an inverted display is hard work, nevermind a volt display.

Looking around on fleabay I found this volt/temp meter from China.

0200903232.jpg

Dirt cheap and with displays for both readings I was looking for, it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

Perfectly? Well, almost.

While the display had 2 colors (blue and amber), it was with the traditional black digits on a colored background.

Having said that, I decided to buy one anyway...

It was around that time though that I found some interesting essays on the net that mentioned that inverted LCD displays don't have any manufacturing differences from the normal displays.

The LCD itself is a completely transparent piece of glass with 2 polarized filters placed on either sides of the screen, thus allowing the digits to show up in black.

Here comes the clever part: if you reverse the polarized filters then you can reverse the effect on the LCD screen, making the background black and the digits transparent!

It even had an example complete with photos of how to go about doing this!

http://www.icehw.net/article/invert_lcd

I got very excited (ok, I'll admit I have no personal life! :P) so I decided to try this on this particular meter. I must admit however that I was very sceptical whether this process would work.

I took it apart, and then I carefully removed the LCD screen like so:

14.jpg

Much to my surprise the LCD glass was indeed transparent now.

I reversed the polarising filters and the result was this: :fing02:

dscf1460m.jpg

I switched it on and here is how it looks now:

Blue

dscf1451.jpg

Amber

dscf1455.jpg

dscf1456y.jpg

Not too bad I think! And with the added bonus of costing about 10 USD in total.

I will come back with some pics of the display mounted on the bike.

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