Need help driving this electronic motorbike gauge

Using Arduino Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
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EDIT: Please look at my latest post here , I have a new question

Hey guys,

I am fairly new to arduino development and electronics in general. I have done all the "beginner" kind of experimentations when I got my arduino (101 things you can do with LEDS lol ) but now I'd like to move on to a bigger project. I had in mind to use a motorbike dashboard that I had lying around the flat in order to use the gauges to physically display the computer's resources usage in real time.
Now I am in my Final Year of computer Science and have done my fair share of embedded system programming, so the coding part of the project is not a real issue. What I am having trouble with though is actually getting the gauge to work.

I have literally no idea how it actually works, I am not even sure of what is actually is: Is is a stepper motor, is it a servo, is it something else entirely?

I was able to determine that the dashboard came from a BMW K100RS motorbike (picture of dash) but I couldn't find any schematics or useful info concerning the dashboard internals.

It has 3 pins tat were connected to the dashboard 'controller': One is marked " - " one is marked " + " and the last one is marked " 1 "

I have some pictures and a video i'd like to share with you so that you might be able to tell me what it actually is and how I could interface it with the arduino.

[Video here]

I would really appreciate if anyone could help me :slight_smile:

thanks

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Its a 'galvanometer' - just like old mechanical ammeters use - the pointer deflects proportional to the current through the meter. There is a damping mechanism to stop the needle wobbling. The circuit board is probably taking a pulse stream and converting to a current to drive the meter.

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Hey thanks for the reply! I am glad I know have a name for this thing haha. So, I'm guessing I would have to drive it through a PMW pin, and hook it up to a 5v source?

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Eureka!

Thanks to you I got it working :slight_smile: Right now it's just a loop going from 0 to 255 and sending it to pin 9, but yea, I think i'm gonna be able to manage now :slight_smile:

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Like an old fashioned two wheeler, the altered bike lifts you into the upper strata. ... Well it worked like a charm and now when I need help to hold the ...

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Hey again.

I got myself another instrument cluster from a BMW car (E36 I believe), but this one has got a different type of gauge component, which I have no idea what it is. And not knowing what is is means I can't drive it with my arduino :frowning:

Does anyone recognise this component? Kind of looks like a motor, is has 3 or 4 pins and seems to have gears:

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