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Liking Analog Meters Doesn't Make You a Luddite (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the let's-not-forget-nixie-tubes dept.

Chris Gordon works for a high-technology company, but he likes analog meters better than digital readouts. In this video, he shows off a bank of old-fashioned meters that display data acquired from digital sources. He says he's no Luddite; that he just prefers getting his data in analog form -- which gets a little harder every year because hardly any new analog meters are being manufactured. (Alternate Video Link)

8 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Analog displays are better in some situations. by RingDev · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Especially when you don't need to know the exact number and you need a visual indicator that can be recognized at a glance.

    Speedometers, tachometers, load balance reporting, etc...

    I don't need to know the exact mbps that is currently getting pulled off my server, I need to know at a glance if my load is going into the red. I don't have the time to take my eyes off the road to read that I am traveling at 55.4 MPH @ 2571 RPMs, I just need to know that my needle is pointing up and left, and that my tach isn't pointing straight up.

    That said, I want digital values for all of those things, streaming in real time through the appropriate systems, feeding logs, and populating data warehouses for later analysis.

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    1. Re:Analog displays are better in some situations. by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      as a guy over 50 who has analog meters (triplett, simpson, stuff like that) that are nearly as old as I am, I can say with confidence that you have no idea what you are talking about.

      digital meters tend to fail more! they are more complex, and unless you buy very good ones, they will suffer 'cap problems' (esp. if made in china, which nearly all things are, these days).

      otoh, buy a used meter of the type I described and as long as it was not hit by a truck, it will likely work and out live YOU.

      springs fail? never saw that happen. bushings fail? again, never saw that happen.

      I would guess, based on your very high UID that you are a youngster and never really used or lived with such gear before.

      probably better to just remain silent than to speak up and tell everyone how much you don't know.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    2. Re:Analog displays are better in some situations. by Daniel_Staal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because the average human being can actually read it better off of a changing analog-style dial than they can understand a bare number. It has to do with us being well developed at judging distances for throwing and jumping. (And an analog dial allows you to read both off of one instrument.)

      --
      'Sensible' is a curse word.
    3. Re:Analog displays are better in some situations. by itzly · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, in your long life with analog meters, I take it there was not a single occasion where you had tap a meter with your finger to correct it ?

    4. Re:Analog displays are better in some situations. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He is also looking at survivor bias.

      Most electronic equipment has about 3 forms of life.

      1) Burns fast. Usually within warranty. This is usually some sort of manufacture defect. Lifetime of 1-2 months.
      2) Med burn. Just stops working something in it busted out of warranty (usually by 1 day ;)) Lifetime of 4-10 years
      3) old timers. These things do not stop working. They last decades.

      When you look at old equipment you usually only come across old timers. As the first two categories were junked decades ago. Med burn is where most things are designed for. So you end up with 'they dont make them like they used to'. It is like that light bulb in that firestation it is well over 100 years old. That is an anomaly most bulbs of that timeframe burned out long ago.

      Also some people have this unholy ability to break things. I seem to have the opposite effect I can't. Back when everyone had CDs I would see people with CDs that have zillions of scratches all over them. I would have well used CDs that did not have 1.

  2. Value of Analog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like analog meters because most digital meters suck. Digital meters sample, and most of them sample poorly. Good ones sample much faster than they update the display, and average per display update.

    Analog meters, on the other hand, mechanically integrate and give some information about the frequency and range of a rapidly varying input. Additionally, they noticeably twitch better than many digital displays and give a much better awareness of rate of change than do digital gauges.

    All of these problems are taken care of in good digital gauges. Not at all ironically, the good ones aggressively emulate analog gauges. The newer 747s I fly have tapes and gauges on glass that work very, very well. I have no complaints about them. Outside of aviation, though, the only digital gauges that don't suck are digital speedometers, and that's with a ton and a half of dampening.

  3. Re:Claim is BS. by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A dash doesn't need to be analogue. It just needs to appear analogue.

    Case in point have a look at the well designed cockpit of an A380. Gauges everywhere... err no, 4 big LCD monitors displaying gauges everywhere.

  4. Human Machine Interaction Science by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is very interested to watch trends in HMI design over many years, especially in the process industry.

    In the 60s it was all about chart recorders. The exact pressure / temperature didn't matter, what was critical was a short term trend and operating roughly in the right place. They were easy to interprate and somehow entire refineries were run without fancy control systems.
    Jump to the 80s and it was all about dotting numbers all over a screen in the name of progress.
    At the turn of the century the numbers started getting longer. The worst case I saw was a differential pressure transmitter which displayed flow through a pipe in kg/h to 6 significant digits (yeah right).

    In the last 5 years there's been a rise of what the industry is calling "High Performance HMI". And it's taking everything back to basics, back to what it was before some vendor gave people the option of plastering pretty graphics and numbers on a display. The move is now about removing all distractions, removing the colours, displaying short term graphing trends, limiting the numbers to only essentials and never more than 2 decimal places unless it's critical.

    The inspiration of HpHMI is .... the airline industry. The A380 cockpit has 8 large LCD displays, yet what they display on them are analogue gauges.
    Analogue gauges ignore the exact number in favour of quick and easy glances at current operating states. More importantly analogue gauges provide one thing that digital gauges never will, quick and easy rate of change information. Rather than calculating in your head you can simply see the needle move. It's an important bit of info that can't be shown any other way.

    Take a look at any cockpit.
    The autopilot heading: digital. The exact number is important. It doesn't change quickly. If it does change quickly then it's not important to know about it because likely something else is currently going wrong.
    The altitude: analogue. The exact number is not important. Its rate of change is important.

    We need to go thaw some designers from the 50s and 60s and put them back in charge to kill this obsession with numbers that seems to have crept in in the past 30 years.