The knock sensor is a piezo microphone buried in the engine near the cylinder heads. Its output is noise and becomes large (big pulses) when knocking occurs. The ratio of knocking to not is at least 6 db afair. It depends which motor, which car and which sensors you use. The microphone needs to be tuned to the motor afaik. Peter -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.