I'm more or less a newb and was wondering if this was possible and/or practical. I would like to build a circuit that'll close after it reaches a sum of voltages per time interval equal to some larger voltage. Any ideas?
I believe you want a boxcar integrator. It has a switch along with an integrator to integrate for a desired interval of time and then holds the value. A second switch resets the integrator for another measurement.
I'm trying to use the voltage output from a throttle position sensor in order to roughly determine how much fuel has passed through my fuel system. This is so that when I switch fuel supplies, I can have the appropriate lag between switching the line-in three-way valve and switching the line-out three-way valve in order to minimize fuel contamination. I'll definitely check out integrators, which look like they would fit my needs. Thanks!
How long do you need to do this integration? If it's more than a few seconds you may need to do it digitally. The general concept is to periodically add the measured value to an accumulated sum. The accumulated sum is the integtrated value. If you do this for a long period the values may need to be scaled to avoid overflow. A microcontroller such as a PIC could readily do all this.