Using Arduino for datalogging remote area power supply

Hello everyone,

I would like to log data for my home power supply and a colleague has suggested that i consider using arduino components. What I will be logging are the following analogue inputs:

1 x Voltage 0-100VDC
1 x Voltage 0-35VDC
1 x Current 0-300A
3 x Current 0-30A
Temperature x 2

I would also like the system to log the following weather data:
Wind speed
wind direction
global solar radiation
temp, pressure

A sample rate of 5sec intervals would be sufficient.

The system needs to be very power efficient and store the data on solid state memory with data either manually or automatically uploaded to a pc or cloud when there is a connection.

I am interested in opinions on hardware requirements and any experiences you may have had logging these parameters

Thankyou and I look forward to discussing this project with you!

Matt

No personnel experience with logging.
Suggest a serial EEPROM or FRAM to log the data into.
Or do some math, # of bytes each message type, any protocol/seperators/alignment bytes, how many total samples between uploads, maybe SDcard might be better.
Powered from AC source, yes? Not battery? Maybe just battery as temporary backup?

How will you tell when there is a connection? There will be a message sent over the USB/Serial port saying "Send your data now"?
Or you will have an ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, etc. shield?

Given the number of inputs, I'd look at a Mega board.

Thanks guys,

the mega board has 16 analogue inputs, 0 to 5 volt 10bit and a usb. So all inputs would need to be conditioned somehow to be 0-5v signals.

WOuld i need anything else if i was to log to a usb storage?

Yeah something to write to the USB device, an Arduino won't easily. That's why an SD card was mentioned as an Arduino will write to one easily.

Bob

So in addition to the mega 2560, i would need perhaps an ethernet shield, a real time clock shield and an SD shield? There is an adafruit datalogger board with SD slot but it only has 6 analog inputs. WOuld analog inputs add to the analog inputs on the mega board?

No, those 6 are A0-A5, and A6-A15 would be the rest of the Mega analog pins.

So with the adafruit datalogger and the mega 2560 i would have 16 analog inputs to use?

if so this is sounding very promising. I would like to hear from anyone about their experience logging/acquiring data using this combo