MotorTach started with a frustration I ran into for decades in the field: the tools for checking a motor were slow, fussy, or left back at the shop, even though the answer was sitting right there in the vibration of the machine.
I built my first variable-frequency drive for Westinghouse in 1982, working from hand-written instructions in a 3-ring binder. It was test stamp 28 on the Accutrol 300, the first VFD the company ever sold. By 1984 I was teaching VFD theory to Westinghouse's own engineering department in Oldsmar, Florida, and to plants like Chevron out in the field. In the decades since, I've automated just about everything I could get my hands on, from Visual Basic ActiveX controls talking to PLCs and drives, to Palm Pilot apps on the plant floor, to the control-system software for the Fukushima emergency cesium-removal system under contract with Sloan Electric in San Diego. Motors, drives, PLCs, robots, and now AI and machine learning. I've always wanted to be where the leading edge is.
But the idea behind MotorTach didn't come from a lab. It came from years in field service, and one thing I saw over and over: the tech doesn't have the tool. No amp probe. No multimeter. The strobe tach left back at the shop, or its batteries dead. I spent a good part of my career coming up with tricks to get a reading anyway, because the machine still needs answers whether or not the right tool made it into the truck.
The one tool everybody always has is the phone in their pocket. Lately I've been using AI and machine learning to capture hard-won, high-tech knowledge and put it to work, and semi-retiring finally gave me the time to chase ideas I'd carried for years while I was too busy helping everyone else. MotorTach is one of them: turn the phone you're already carrying into a tachometer that reads a motor's speed and load in seconds, from the outside, without opening a thing.
I know drives, which is exactly why I'll tell you straight that MotorTach is happiest on line-fed, constant-speed motors, and that a VFD can make the lock harder to catch. That's the honest version. My goal is simple: put a reliable reading in the hands of every tech and operator, using the tool they already have.
These days I tell people I'm a helper. I'm getting older now, and I owe it to the young people coming up to pass down what I know. MotorTach is one way I'm doing that.
Teaching VFD theory in 1984, a couple of years after building that first drive.
Whether you run an HVAC shop, manage maintenance for a city or county, or just want to try MotorTach on your own equipment, I'd love to hear from you.
