Arduino as data measurement

Other Hardware Sensors
1

Hi all,
I'm a complete noob in arduino (did do some basic things in it). Now I'm working on a thesis project where I want to measure some things (Thrust, torque, temperature, pressure, rpm, V and I from an electric motor). Is it possible to measure those things multiple times with arduino, or should i need something like labview and professional equipement like boards of national instruments?

Basically what i want to do is vary the rpm from let's say 5000-15000 and while doing that save the values of

  • a load cell (have found a tuturial for that, thanks)
  • Torque transducer (this might be more tricky, as all the thesises i found are done by using national instruments and labview)
  • rpm (I have an rpm meter with display, but associating the data with the measured values of the other variables would be very handy i guess)
  • V and I drawn by the electric motor (this is just measured by a multimeter, but again, if this could be done by arduino, it would be much better).

Before I want to jump into reading I want to know if it's possible to make. I'm a uni student and have some time to learn to work with arduino, as i don't have any courses anymore, just this. But before doing and buying things I want to know if it's possible or not. I guess the values would need to be measured and saved multiple times a second.

Thanks for having a look at this topic, and I hope I can learn from all of you.

2

Torque transducers are generally very expensive ($1000 or so) You can get around that by mounting the motor in a cradle and measure the reaction forces instead.

3

Yes I know they're expensive. I don't know if the uni has some or not. If not this would be a problem. What do you mean by cradle? I have looked on the internet to build one myself but haven't found much information yet about it.
Thanks for the input

4

You will have to build a motor mount where the motor is held by 2 bearings coaxial with the motor axle. The bearing at the D end must large enough to let the axle pass without contact. Now the motor can spin freely around its own axle. To prevent that from happening you mount a torque arm with a normal force sensor (load cell). Since the distance between the axle center and the force sensor is known you can calculate the torque from the measured force.

5

Tack ska du ha! Does the rest of my objectives sound realistic to do with arduino or not? I found this very useful tutorial on youtube:

Which might get me started.