PLX Gauges Install and Review
 

Overall Review: Two Thumbs up! Great digital gauges, nice daisy-chain capabilities, excellent OLED displays, great customer service.

Pros: One OLED display can control up to four different sensors, eliminating the need for multiple "ricey" gauges. Sensor units are crafted out of billet aluminum cases and are small and easy to install. You can start with a limited number of sensors and add on to your system as money/time permits. Display views on OLED display toggles from normal "analog" gauge look, to a digital readout, to a running graph, to peak holds, to up to four sensor parameters at one time. Can completely customize the gauge look and feel, can set warnings for each sensor.

Excellent support and very cool company!

Cons: Somewhat pricey. One OLED display and control module is $210 and each sensor gauge is $90 - $100. Units don't have "power: display indicators or "connected" displays making trouble shooting more difficult. Using one remote to control more than one display at a time is cumbersome.


Wanted to share with you my PLX Devices setup and observations to date. Search for my 3 rotor buildup and you'll know what I have gone through over the past four years getting the car to this point. My PLX Devices experience has been a bright spot in the ordeal.

I wanted to have a clean, OEM look for gauges on my car and I am not a big fan of having numerous gauges installed all over the car so I was looking for a digital solution that would allow me to run multiple sensors from a limited number of gauges. The solution? PLX gauges from www.plxdevices.com! PLX Devices makes a daisy-chain line of sensor devices that can be controlled from one OLED display. My sensor needs:

- AFR
- Boost
- Vacuum
- Oil Temperature
- Water Temperature
- Oil Pressure
- EGT
- Fuel Pressure (not offered yet from PLX so I have a Spa unit installed in the glove box)

As I didn't want to run 7 separate gauges to monitor the above, I went with a 2-display setup from PLX. I ordered two DM-100 OLED displays and control units and then sensor units to run the above. The OLED displays are quite beautiful in their display capabilities and look and I have the two of them mounted to my driver's side pillar. My top unit monitors AFR (this is the default I have set) and also Oil and Water temps, and EGT. My bottom display monitors boost (default set by me) as well as vacuum, and oil pressure. This is completely customizable by the user and each display can control up to four sensors at one time.

I have my sensor units and control modules installed under my driver's side carpet. I cut out some of the foam under the car to accommodate the units but they are quite small and fit well. You can install these almost anywhere and an obvious choice would be in one of the bins. They slide together for easy install. The negatives I note are the units don't have a "power on" indicator or a "connected" indicator so if something is not hooked up quite right, it's a bit of a bear to know what is going on. On the good news side, PLX support is great and they're always available to help out with any issues.

Once connected, you can toggle between different "views" on each OLED display, going from the classic analog gauge look, to a large digital readout, to a running graph, to a four parameter display. You can also display peak values for each sensor and can set warnings. For example, the units will flash if you exceed thresholds for temps, pressure, boost, etc. You can also setup the displays to default to your preferred gauge (AFR on top and Boost on bottom for me). Each gauge is color customizable also so you can have them look almost any way you want. If that is not enough, then PLX has a custom gauge library where you can download different looks and gauges. Note here: You can only download one custom gauge per display unit so you can't have this look across all four of your gauges, just one. I've suggested to PLX they increase this capability to make this more functional in the future.

The displays are controlled by two small remotes (one remote for each display unit) which I have located to the left of my seat. You can combine the two remotes into one, and have this one remote control both displays, but I find the process too cumbersome so I use the two remotes. My top remote has a little "bump sticker" so I can easily distinguish one from the other.

Updates are available to the gauges via a USB laptop hookup.


The bottom line? I highly recommend PLX gauges to you. They're very accurate (all digital) and have features like no other gauges I know of. That's probably why PLX Devices won "best of SEMA" last year.

Pics:

Initial Startup Screens Customizable:
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1251220084

My default gauge views:
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1251220084

Digital Display Capability:
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1251220084

Running Real-time Graph:
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1251220084

Four Parameter View
https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1251220084

Damn those gauges are nice, I am in the same boat like u hated allot of gauges look, I opt for the SPA type, I wish I new about this type of gauges I would get them instead of SPA.
Good Post.
Khris

I've had a chance to see these in person. Thanks for showing them to me David. They are really cool. I do have a gripe with the analog view not encompassing the whole circular pod but really, from a manufacturing and programming point of view, doing it that way would be a waste. I plan on getting these over defis in the future. Clicking through all the views is awesome. The FOV of the display was excellent. I remember being able to see them clearly while sitting in the passenger side. The blacks on the display are also nice and inky.

I also saw Khris' gauge setup as well. Very nice as well!


Also custom gauge face editing!!

http://www.plxdevices.com/support/software/utility.html

I WILL BE GETTING THESE.

Here are more videos...
http://www.plxdevices.com/multigauges.html

Just like you I hated the plethora of gauges people have so I got these and i love them as well. I monitor AFR's and EGT's. BTW my AFR is dead on with my tuner's wideband.

Next on the list is a boost sensor so i can hide by boost controller :)



Edit- my only gripe is that windows vista has issues with their loading software.

technical specs:

Physical Dimensions (Gauge):
DM-100 2 1/16" x 0.7" (18mm)
DM-200 60mm x 0.7" (18mm)


They are rather thin as the gauge is not really a gauge it's more of a display screen. The gauges are comprised of two parts the display module and the the sensor module. The latter is a little box that can go anywhere in your car (under the seat per say).


check them out:
http://www.plxdevices.com/multigauges.html

This looks like a great alternative to having gauges...

http://www.plxdevices.com/datalogger.html

Maybe I'll just buy an eeepc in leiu of gauges. I was going to do that as an alternative to a GPS anyway.

Yes.

o i seee, i thought you just had to buy the wideband sensor only and hook it up... i take back the cheap part but it is a very sexy thing to have.

Closed.

For reason contact David.

I shut down this thread because it was going off track and becoming a "Product" for sale thread by the representative of the Company who was given very specific instructions that they were to stick to answering "Technical" questions and not to list any product for sale nor pricing, which they did.



This is a "technical" section, not a "Advertising" section.

It is good to share product that we have come across that others may be interested in and to go over the features and benefits of those products.

David has already posted a link to their website and that is all you need if you are interested in buying their product. There is to be no other reference to selling of this product as their is no reason to.

Stick to the "Technical" content for this product and the thread will stay open. That means no "Are we going to do a group buy" either. Only authorized vendors are allowed to do group buy interest threads and then they are only allowed in the "product development and interest sections".

Help us out here and keep the "Technical" section what it is supposed to be so that we can have these type of threads here without violating the Vendor advertising rules.


Thank you and sorry for the interruption of this informative thread.

Doc.

Thanks for reopening the thread Doc:) I will check in on this in a week or so but will most likely be out of Internet range on a vacation to a cabin in Asheville NC!

ok techincal info :)

I could not upload custom gauges because the previous utility software was not compatible with windows vista. So if anyone has an older utility version (like I did) just go on their website and download version 3.1 which is now compatible with windows vista.

http://www.plxdevices.com/support/software/utility.html

This setup is very nice! Great find and review. I look forward to installing them in my car. This is exactly what I was looking for.

PLX FTW!!

I thought there may be more FD owners interested in this type of setup. The OLED display to me is a great solution to control and display a number of sensors at one time. It's great to glance up and have all of the info available at one place.

I am a Mac guy so uploading the custom gauge info was an interesting exercise to say the least. Set down my beautiful Mac Air for my old Dell and had Windows compatibility issues because it is so old. Borrowed my friend's Dell Vista laptop which constantly reminded me why I use a Mac:) Got it done in the end though.

You can install windows on your macbook air. I run windows and OSX on mini, or at least I did.

^ yep there's something called VMWare Fusion.

but anyway the gauges are really nice. thx for the review. the gauges add up some modernize to the car. however, just me, I'd prefer analog, mechanical gauges. it's more old school. the customize faces thing just freak me out.

No, Im talking about boot camp. Its pretty great. There is an instance of boot camp in OSX and Windows so you can switch between the 2. The funny thing is that I think the windows one is better and easier to use. HAAAAA.

Pretty neat. But I guess for a cheapskate like me, analogue gauges are still the way to go.

I have windows installed on my mac buy never use it. Don't want to introduce the world of viruses to the mac air. Gave up windows several years ago and have never looked back:). Funny made my living off of windows and don't want to touch it now.

Heeeeey thats not true. You cant introduce viruses into the OSX partition! Stop spreading lies David! :)

Also Eien, unless you scrape the bottom of the barrel, these arent that much more expensive are they? Comparable to defis I think.

But you can to the windows partition thus no winows on the beautiful mac air. It deserves better:)

hahahaha I surrender.

If only they could combine the boost sensor into a controller to take the place of an AEM TruBoost, that would be awesome. I want to go PLX but then I'd have to switch boost controllers if i wanted all my gauges to match :(

So does anyone know if these may be conected to the PFC datalogit? I would assume they have an output since they also have dataloging soft/hardware.

I am still trying to understand why my question on this was deleted b/c I had NO advertising in it and was asking a question of functionality to the vendor/anyone with knowledge on the subject...