Logging data from a voltmeter to monitor a motorbike battery

Far be it from me to discourage anyone from seemingly pointless electronics tinkering, but from your description in post #15, I'm almost certain you've got a battery that's on it's way out and the charging system is fine. You could verify this by charging the battery with an external charger, letting it sit for a few days, and then monitoring the voltage across the battery with the starter cranking. You could, of course, build an Arduino based voltmeter to do the monitoring.

It is entirely possible for alternators, rectifiers, and regulators (especially Honda regulators) to fail or display curious intermittent behavior, but if sitting unused for a few days is a necessary part of the failure, it's the battery.

As an aside, if the polarity of a functional alternator were reversed across a functional battery, the relevant thread topic would be Arduino based fire suppression systems.

Prodeguerriero:

Perhaps you aught to ask Schrödinger's cat what his/hers opinion is on this matter.

The answer would probably be something along the line of "you won't know until somethings explodes" >D

so, you are saying the battery is both on fire, and charging perfectly...
but, you have not looked....

...yet.

dave-in-nj:
so, you are saying the battery is both on fire, and charging perfectly...
but, you have not looked....

Reminds me of the schoolboy joke "Do you smoke after XXX? I don't know, I never loooked"

...R

Regarding the data logging part of your project, take a look at A really inexpensive data logger with only three components. - Exhibition / Gallery - Arduino Forum

pantaz:
Regarding the data logging part of your project, take a look at A really inexpensive data logger with only three components. - Exhibition / Gallery - Arduino Forum

Thanks!