any interest in a Data Logging ESC?

[Kyle G.]

That thought came to me about a Data Logging Brushed ESC. My Dad is a programmer and he thinks it could be feasible. What would the interest in say a 25 amps ESC, that can log in flight data like Amps, Watts, Voltage? BL is out of the question for now, though. Just an idea. Whats your take on something like this? has it been done before?

[ryanjones]

Interesting idea. It is very duable, lots of different industries do lots and lots of data logging on power usage. It might be better to build a unit that plugs in series with the ESC, that way you could log data for any ESC.

[thanhTran]

It's very nice to have an ESC with data logging capability. Other already have devices to analize data with a seperate device.

If the ESC can log data like: current, voltage, RPM, servo pulse length, and others info if needed, that would be great.

Thanh

[Kyle G.]

The idea of making it inline with the ESC makes much more sense. We bought some deans connectors today so hopefully soon progress will come. I'll keep informed of the progress. It looks like now, we will only be able to measure Volts, and Amps. Watts can be determined with the above info. But we are trying to make it so that it will measure the throttle setting so we can find the current at certain throttle levels. This is just an idea still.

[zagisrule!]

Current can be measured easily either with a shunt resistor or hall devices.

Voltage is easily measured with ADC onboard a MCU.

Throttle setting (servo pulse length) could be timed. If you don't want to access the servo connector you can measure the duty cycle of the outgoing PWM to the motor.

RPM is not very simply derived unless you are using it on a brushless system, in which case you can simply count the number of times a certain phase is activated and do some math with the number of poles/magnets the motor has. IMHO it's not really worth it to do either of the above things, just current/voltage graphs over time should be suffiecient.



-Matt

[flyman668]

Yup a data logging ESC is a brilliant idea!!! :D :D

I've been developing one for a while now in my spare time and I have gotten quite a bit done, the hardest part is choosing what you want to implement, i decided to implement the following features.

PC interface for configuration and data retrieval.
Some of the features in the software include,
the ability to control the ESC through the PC with the data being displayed in realtime,
realtime graph with the ability to play, stop, record, rewind and fast forward,
the ability to configure the ESC and save the configurations as profiles on both the PC and in the ESCs internal EEPORM.

Some of the hardware features
BEC,
low voltage cut off,
RPM measurement,
current measurement,
voltage measurement,
Servo position measurement.
I have a few different models one which has forward rotation and break, and one with reverse as well.

There is a few more features that I want to implement as well but I'm not sure if I can yet, anyway there is some features you might want to implement in to yours as well. ;)

Cheers
David

ps note to self find more time to post in this forum! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: