Wireless Telemetry with NI Wireless cDAQ and LabVIEW

[shaishav]

Contact Information

University: Virginia Tech

Team Members (with year of graduation): Shaishav Parekh - 2013

Faculty Advisers: Dr. William Baumann, Dr. Bob West

Email Address: parekhsm@vt.edu

Submission Language: English

Project Information

Title: Virginia Tech Formula SAE

Description:

Monitor vehicle state wirelessly using the car's Engine Control Unit and NI Wireless cDAQ with a CAN module.

Products

Labview 2012, NI XNET

NI 9191 - Wireless cDAQ

NI 9862 - NI XNET High Speed CAN Module

MoTeC M400 Engine Control Unit (ECU)

The Challenge

Trackside engineers do not have information about the car's state while it is on the track. Having the vehicle state information relayed wirelessly helps engineers see and prevent a problem (e.g. engine overheating) before it causes a major problem.

The Solution

The NI XNET CAN Module plugs into the CAN ports of the ECU. It then sends the CAN information wirelessly to a router which is hooked up to a laptop. The VI running on the laptop receives and decodes the CAN information such as engine temperature, exhaust temperature, fuel pressure, and oil pressure and displays them on the front panel.

Benefits:

Reduce design time, enabling us to have more testing time. Simple enough to use without having an indepth knowledge of a particular programming language. The GUI elements of the front panel make it really easy to organize and visualize data. The car does not have to stop going around the track to make and see changes to the Front Panel or the Block Diagram.

Front Panel:

Fuel Analysis Tab:

Traction Control Tab:

Block Diagram:

Code: https://github.com/carbon-/CANBus/tree/master/LabVIEW

Level of completion: Beta

Time to build: 4 weeks

Additional revisions that could be made

• change from wifi to Xbee radios for better range and loss of communication when vehicle goes over 35+ mph. Still use LabVIEW as a display for data.