.Attempting to build a suspension for my Windows 8.1 car pc equipped 4wd Civic hatchback utilizing the arduino hardware. while I have a general idea on how it should work , selecting the right components to make it all work is the issue. Requirements:
1.Must be able to sense the center force of gravity by a centralized G sensor or accelerator mounted at the CG of the car
2.Must be able to drive 4 dc motors at the corners of the car mounted to the adjustable shock to adjust compression and rebound.
Must compensate for the change is CG by stiffening up the suspension to force the car back to as close of cg as possible.
Must be able to calibrate at the beginning of every start-up
Must be active in adjustments and be able to monitor the CG measurements from a Windows based application embedded into Centrafuse 4.4.36 .
Must be adaptable to any vehicle and utilize 12 volt power to run in the automotive environment.
Must record data with select-able storage space applicable to each users preference.
Must have definable adjustment points for the amount of time and
Thats quite an undertaking you are asking for guidance on.... you know what you need to accomplish now you need to go and learn how to do it and have a go. If you get stuck, post with where you are up to and im sure others will help
You need to further clarify your requirements, a lot.
Is this a full size car, or a model? #1 Who determines the CG of the car? What if the CG is not readily accessible for whatever reason? Safety - utility - appearance. #2 How big are the motors? Are they already installed? Need to be installed? #5 What does this mean? Accept serial data from elsewhere? What is protocal, data format, etc? #6 is too broad. I am sure motor sizes would vary a lot from one car to the next. #7 - record data for how long?what data? To what media type? #8 appears to be cut off.
Gotboost858:
1.Must be able to sense the center force of gravity by a centralized G sensor or accelerator mounted at the CG of the car
2.Must be able to drive 4 dc motors at the corners of the car mounted to the adjustable shock to adjust compression and rebound.
Must compensate for the change is CG by stiffening up the suspension to force the car back to as close of cg as possible.
I have a reasonably good grasp of vehicle dynamics and understand the terms you've used in your questions, but I can't understand what you mean by expressions like 'force the car back to as close of cg as possible'. The suspension settings have minimal effect on the position of the center of gravity. Perhaps you're trying to make an automatic leveling system using the dampers as reactive actuators? I suggest you try to describe more clearly what you're trying to achieve, but don't use terms like cg and center of gravity unless you're using them in the conventional Newtonian physics sense.
I am actually wanting the cars change in CG to help adjust the dampening f the front and rear shocks front to rear left to right to help maximize grip in turns, launching, braking etcs. The CG is just being measured as a way of telling Arduino there is a change in pitch and roll of the body to adjust the suspension. I am asking for help in choosing the correct components to make this work. Not to start fights or confrontations online. I am not an expert just a man wanting to be informed of the capabilities of Arduino
Gotboost858:
The CG is just being measured as a way of telling Arduino there is a change in pitch and roll of the body to adjust the suspension.
By 'measuring' I guess you mean you want to discover the position of the CoG, but I don't understand how you expect to do that. From what I can understand of your project you actually want to detect pitch and roll deflections, in which case ride height sensing seems to be the only sensible approach available to you. I've done ride height sensing using plain old string pots but that sort of thing is hardly practical for a permanent installation. For a long term solution I think you would need the sort of pushrod/crank/encoder based sensors that are used for ride height control and leveling on production offroad vehicles. How you interface to those would depend on the specific sensors being used, because the ones I've seen are active units with some internal logic.
Sorry fellas. Been away for awhile. I am using a 3 axis accelerometer to locate changes through the arduino in body roll, pitch and yaw to give accurate options to assist in the calibration of my dampening force front and rear of shocks on my race car. This will allow me to adjust within reasonable level of accuracy all 4 corners of the suspension to assist in creating better atmosphere for traction in any road condition on any surface and type of racing. I want a gain knob to control how quickly it adjusts. Thats all the system will do. The gyro-stabilization is via the accelerometer readings for the position of pitch, roll and yaw of the body of the car from the centerline of the vehicle IE center gravity. All this system must do is stiffen or soften the suspension to increase my ability to adapt the car to road conditions and the amount of traction I get which will be determined by the changes in pitch of the nose.
I believe I would need t have to use PWM for this feature and the relay board to control turning the system on or off directly from the arduino. I am isolating this system from the other components electrically int he car and running it off of the old ABS circuits that are no longer in use. The ABS stepper motor is already removed and this will power my arduino system on my 4wd EG Hatchback.
Gotboost858:
This will allow me to adjust within reasonable level of accuracy all 4 corners of the suspension to assist in creating better atmosphere for traction in any road condition on any surface and type of racing.
I don't understand how you can achieve that with an IMU, unless you're going to make assumptions about the road surface being flat and horizontal. At best, you can hope to have an estimate of the attitude and velocity of the vehicle, but unless you can relate these to the ground surface then you can't infer anything about the suspension deflection or the vehicle's attitude relative to the ground.
It sounds as if you're aiming to make some sort of reactive damper control system that is intended to provide some control over suspension deflection, and that's certainly possible, but if you want to control suspension deflection then it seems to me that you need to measure suspension deflection.
