How to make your TPS tool work when its not exactly 5 volts---A friend of mine is a electrical engineer, and he sent me an Excel spreadsheet that will allow you to use a voltage regulator that does not equal 5 volts (say 4.96 or any other number), to set your TPS. Just type in the volts you get from testing your home made TPS tool, into the attached spreadsheet. Below is his explanation for why this will work. This will prevent the radio shack heartache that I experienced as it will not matter if the regulator is exactly 5 volts anymore!!!
Found a blog post that shows a schematic of the TPS. It is essentially a variable resistor (potentiometer). The output is a tap off the pot which is provides a voltage which is divided down from the input voltage. The good thing is that the output is ratiometric with the input voltage. This means that you don’t need a precision reference to calibrate the system. You only need to scale the expected voltages in accordance with the ratio of voltage you apply to the ideal expected 5.000 volts. In other words, if you supply half the voltage (2.500 volts), expect exactly half the output voltage (0.355 volts at zero, and 0.465 volts at idle), or any other proportion. The attached spreadsheet provides a place to input the voltage of your supply and provides the correct zero and idle voltages for calibration. No precision source needed!