Hello,
You'll need to bear with me here, I think this might end up being a long discussion thread. I've got a lot of questions and very little knowledge.
I'm looking to move away from my existing proprietary vehicle testing suite (Racelogic VBox hardware and software) to a more flexible environment. Whilst I've re-purposed the VBox for a number of testing applications which are a long way from its intended use, the work-arounds to get whatever data you want take time and money to get work and it ends up being pretty slow from a workflow point of view.
So I'm looking at moving to the NI environment and I've come to this wonderful forum to get some advice. I apologise in advance as whilst the core of my question is about the DAQ hardware, I'm pretty certain I'm going to cross into talking about the software side too.
The testing varies quite a bit, it's almost exclusively vehicle testing but my work is quite varied, often it will be a one off to gather data on a specific issue. The majority of my work it is in-motion testing, often in remote and harsh sites. So a balance of portability and flexibility needs to be struck. My current V-box setup travels in one 30 litre pelican case, with the various other modules and accessories in two more 30 litre pelican cases and then a toolbag full of cables and adaptors.
One thing I'm interested in from a practical side is users' experiences with setting up their DAQ to be portable and any issues around heat, power etc.
Starting with the inputs, I know that I'm going to want:
reasonably accuracy and update rate GPS (so, call it 5hz minimum, preferably 10hz+ and ideally DGPS), the VBox provides this currently so I'm going to need to come up with a new solution.
six to twelve pressure transducers (existing Omega units, 0-5v outputs),
a load cell, which is used for pedal force measurement so a range of 0-1000N (looking to replace my current unit as it is very much made for the VBox system so I'm better off keeping it with the VBox and getting something new for whatever future NI system)
six to twelve K-type thermocouple inputs
some accelerometer inputs, main focus is in the 1hz-100hz +/- 5g range, not real happy with my current sensor setup so open to ideas for starting from scratch here.
Now from the software/operations side:
I'd prefer to be able to leave this logging without a PC attached, which I think from my initial research pushes me towards a 'CompactDAQ controller' but I'm open to experience from people of the merits of that route vs. buying a simpler DAQ and having a dedicated laptop or small form factor PC setup to live with the DAQ.
I'd like the system to be able to do some basic real time analysis, mostly from the brake testing side, it would be nice if upon a particular set of conditions being met, that it could at least offer me a counter of distance travelled after the brake is applied, ideally that it would hold and display a distance from brake application as a start trigger to vehicle speed reaching zero as a stop trigger. I suspect that this should be easy within labview but it's been about 15 years since I have last seen Labview and a lot of my neurons have died since then, so if someone could confirm this that woudl be great.
I have some tests that I do on a regular basis, so it would be nice to have some good post-analysis to take data from testing, run it against a bunch of pass:fail criteria, extract the key numbers and export it out into a pro-forma report. From my early research it looks like DIAdem is the package for that in the NI environment, is that right?
From my reading, it looks like if I want to log GPS data, that I'm best doing that straight to the PC and combine it with the data from the CompactDAQ inside of labview. If I go a CompactDAQ controller, what do I do about that?
I think that's enough questions to get me started.
Many thanks in advance for any assistance/insight.
Regards,
VehicleEngineer.
