Help for measuring voltage and storage of data every day for 5 years

Hi guys !
I'm new to this forum and to Arduino altogether, so please bear with me. I need some help for an ongoing project.
I have a project where I want to measure the voltage of the battery of an electric scooter every day for about 5 years
I want to save the voltage on the battery every day for about 5 years I like the data will be saved if the module loses power and I would like to
read out the date on a PC through a USB connector.
I think I could use an Arduino but what kind I need I do not know
Can some help me

It is very simple to measure just the voltage. Any Arduino can do this. Arduino UNO is golden standard for newbies but probably you want smaller form, so Arduino Nano. You can save the data to SD card then some shield for SD card reader you will need.

How often do you want to read the voltage? Do you want to store other data? eg date/time, temperature? How often do you intend to download the data ?

That sets the interface devices and the amount of data storage you need

Various arduino's have differing amounts of EEPROM - if that's not enough you could use an SD card

regards

Allan

Good point, to use EEPROM, I was considering whether to mention or not. However, EEPROM wears, it is tolerable about 100k writes.

Hi Allanhurst and Budvar10
The data I need is Date and voltages like 24-10-2016 24,3 and i need the date to be taken ones daily and i need one or two times a year to read this data through a USB connector into a laptop's PC.

Understand, but how many times in hour/minute... you want to save a voltage?

Budvar10:
Understand, but how many times in hour/minute... you want to save a voltage?

Once each day. About 1825 readings total.

Oops... sorry. :-*

EEPROM could be sufficient to store data somehow. Let say you will save the date_time in 32bit value of seconds (4bytes) + voltage in mV (2bytes). Nano has ATmega328P chip with 1k EEPROM. Each day you save 6 bytes - 170 days total capacity.

okay i need date 251016 = 6 byte and voltage 25,6 = 4 byte total each day 10 byte and in one year 365x10 = 3650 byte and in 5 year = 18.250 byte do i need a SD card

It rather looks like it... plus a RTC shield for the date and time. - the internal oscillator on an arduino isn't very very accurate.

regards

Allan.

pemo:
okay i need date 251016 = 6 byte and voltage 25,6 = 4 byte total each day 10 byte and in one year 365x10 = 3650 byte and in 5 year = 18.250 byte do i need a SD card

I meant binary form: date_time in seconds like DOS or UNIX time in seconds since 01.01.1970 00:00:00 - it is only 4 bytes and voltage in binary form 2 bytes in mV it can represent 0V-65.536V range. You need not data to be 'readable' as text in EEPROM and it is just 6 bytes.
Do you need to keep 5 years in memory? You can save it to PC after some period and overwrite, isn't it?

I recommend you use Jack Christensen's serial data logger and a separate Arduino for the measurements.
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=281091.0

This is a very interesting thread. May I ask some questions that come to an old data processing professional?

How valuable, to you, is the data you are collecting for 5 years? If you cannot retrieve the data after 4 years and 11 months, what have you lost? Will anyone care?

How sure are you the technology to retrieve the data will still be available 5 years from now? Will the PC still be around, or will something like the smart phone completely replace it? think of the VHF tape, obsolete, the CD, obsolete, the DVD, going obsolete, Blue ray? may be obsolete in 5 years.

Will you be able to assure yourself, over 5 years, the data is being stored and can be retrieved?

In my 34 years in data processing, I observed one single case where a single bit was changed in a mainframe computer, probably by a cosmic ray, and discovered by balancing the output amounts. What would be the result of some piece of your stored data being wrong when you eventually downloaded it? Do you need to keep a separate running total to prove you have all the data and it has not been changed?

In bank data processing, the data was so valuable, reports were printed every day and stored off-site just for ultimate backup. Seldom used, but of infinite value at times. If your data has any value over 5 years, you may want to print it as well as store it.

Please keep us updated with your design and progress.

Paul

Like Paul hints, losing the data could be bloody annoying.

Maybe you could consider something like an ESP8266/NodeMCU, you could get it to wake up and check for your home wifi every 6 hours, then upload if it sees it. That way any data loss is minimised :slight_smile:

It still uses the arduino IDE/method....