A college team that I mentor went the Labview route. Their setup is top
notch. They have screens that control their valves and servos and fill
operations and display relevant data as needed. To test a motor you just
have to follow the screens and the prompts (and reference the checklist)
and everything goes well.
Very slick.
Edward
On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 3:52 PM, Graham Sortino <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
I'll preface this by saying this is only tangentially related to rockets
so apologies in advance if this is somewhat off topic.
I’m starting to design the sensor acquisition (pressure transducers, flow
measurement, thermocouples) and control hardware (servo and solenoid valve
actuators) for our 500lbf LOX/Kero test stand. I’m trying to decide how I
want to handle data acquisition as well as control and I was curious about
other approaches people take.
In the past I’ve done this via a simple Arduino microcontroller w/ support
boards for power, servo control, and signal conditioning but I have a bit
more budget this time and I’d like to do something more sophisticated. My
goals are primarily higher frequency signal acquisition, 12 to 16 bit ADC
conversion and some-level of isolation to protect electronics.
From research so far it sounds like there are 2 main approaches to data
acquisition / control (1) purchase a professional DAQ such as NI/Labview or
(2) mainly build your own using a microcontroller. The prior being very
expensive and the latter requiring more time/experience in EE/SW.
I’m starting to lean towards the TI Launched development boards (
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/tools-software/launchpads/launchpads.page).
From what I’ve been reading they seem a lot more sophisticated/professional
then an Arduino and it seems like TI is serious about supporting them. I
also am getting the feeling that the professional DAQ systems are a tad
overpriced for what you actually get and there is more platform lock-in.
Apologies again if this is slightly off-topic but I hope there a few EE/SW
folks on this list who find these topics interesting.
All the Best,
Graham
