Small low-cost embedded board for a model airplane

[Albert Goodwill]

Hello Electronics Experts,

For a real-time signal monitoring and logging application, I am loking
a small, low power and light weight microcontroller board. This board
will be carried on a remotely piloted model airplane. As the airplane
flies it will collect data from various sensors and save them to a SD
memory card as well as it will send selected data to the ground for
data logging and monitoring.

Can you recommend any embedded board which can satisfy the following
requirements?

THX,

Albert Goodwill
AlbertGoodwill @ yahoo . com

Requirements
============
* ADC (Analog to Digital Converter)
13 channel (simultaneous sample hold is desirable)
16 bits resolution
it will be used to capture 1000 samples/ second

* I2C interface
* SPI interface
* 4 X UART
* Free (or low-cost) C compiler and SW development environment



Following are the sensors to be connected to the embedded board
Sensors with analog outputs
* 3 axis accelerometers (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 3 axis gyros (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 3 axis magnetosensors (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 2 pressure sensors (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 2 current sensor (0-500mv outputs)

RMP Sensor
* 0-10000 RMP sensor with 1 logic pulse per rotation

Fuel Consumption sensor
* 1 logic pulse per xx milliliter fuel flow

Sensors with I2C iterface
* 10 temperature sensors with I2C

Other Sensors
* GPS receiver (accepting DGPS correction) with RS232 interface

 

[Al]

Hello Electronics Experts,

For a real-time signal monitoring and logging application, I am loking
a small, low power and light weight microcontroller board. This board
will be carried on a remotely piloted model airplane. As the airplane
flies it will collect data from various sensors and save them to a SD
memory card as well as it will send selected data to the ground for
data logging and monitoring.

Can you recommend any embedded board which can satisfy the following
requirements?

THX,

Albert Goodwill
AlbertGoodwill @ yahoo . com

Requirements
============
* ADC (Analog to Digital Converter)
13 channel (simultaneous sample hold is desirable)
16 bits resolution
it will be used to capture 1000 samples/ second

* I2C interface
* SPI interface
* 4 X UART
* Free (or low-cost) C compiler and SW development environment



Following are the sensors to be connected to the embedded board
Sensors with analog outputs
* 3 axis accelerometers (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 3 axis gyros (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 3 axis magnetosensors (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 2 pressure sensors (0-5v or 0-3.3v analog outputs)
* 2 current sensor (0-500mv outputs)

RMP Sensor
* 0-10000 RMP sensor with 1 logic pulse per rotation

Fuel Consumption sensor
* 1 logic pulse per xx milliliter fuel flow

Sensors with I2C iterface
* 10 temperature sensors with I2C

Other Sensors
* GPS receiver (accepting DGPS correction) with RS232 interface

Check out this web site for suggestions:

http://www.circellar.com

The magazine has great articals on what you have described. You really
are looking for something that is quite high powered and will require a
really powerful model plane.

Al

 

[Si Ballenger]

Albert,

Why do you need 10 temperatures sensors, search for thermals?
You'll have to provide more information about the sensor interfaces,
but this is a lot of functionality for a single micro. You might
want to use multiple microcontroller and that may come in useful if
application is physically separate (left/right wings, forward, aft),
or data separate (temperature and pressure).

There are any number of micros that could be used for this
application, with various trade-offs. If you go with AVR, your
software tools cost will be low using GNU C tools. From your previous
newsgroup posts you appear to have experience with AVR and PIC, so
either of those should be an easy routes to take.

You'll not likely find a micro with 13 channels of simultaneous hold.
13 analog channels is a lot for a micro.and simultaneous hold is
atypical when using a MUX Silicon Labs has a nice 8051 board with
both 16bit and 24bit mux'ed ADC, but only 8 channels. I recently used
the Silabs F350 with 8 24-bit ADC channels to sample a Honeywell 3
axis magnetic sensor at 1kHz. Works well.

I'd split the functions into at least TWO, possibly Three micros.
Use Two micros with 8channels of ADC, and use the third for RF
transmission and data storage. You can communicate between these
serially. This will also make it easier to get 4 serial ports, as you
typical get 2 UART channels per micro. 4 UART channels is unusual and
with the functionality you need, you don't want to be bit banging the
serial ports.

The RF transmission will probably dominate your power requirements, so
I wouldn't worry about finding the lowest power micro, unless you do
away with RF transmssion. With continuous 1000 samples per second,
your sleep opportunites will be limited.

[email protected]
Indianapolis, IN USA

Review the below projects might have similr topics.

http://www.pigeonblog.mapyourcity.net/blurb.php
http://tam.plannet21.com/