Low-cost data logging and telemetry system for All-Terrain Vehicle performance analysis

摘要

Rapid advancements in the field of embedded systems have facilitated the development of cost-effective complex projects with innovative outcomes. These advancements also apply for the automotive racing domain in the form of digital data extraction and wireless communication. It is of utmost importance to have a system in racing vehicles that will cater real-time data to the race engineers using which the process of troubleshooting the vehicle in the pit can be aided. In this manuscript, a data logging and a telemetry system for an All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) has been developed by Team Torpedo, the ATV racing team of Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore. The team participates in national amateur off-road racing competitions that see an attendance of over 250 reputed college teams from different parts of the country. This system is based on a low-cost embedded platform powered by an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller. Important parameters like speed, G forces, GPS coordinates, etc. are logged in a microSD card which is used for validating the ATVs design and standardize its performance. During the racing events, the collected data is wirelessly transmitted to the pit using the Zigbee protocol over a reasonably large distance. In the receiver's end, the data is graphically rendered for the race engineers to assess the ATV's real-time performance.