Chamber Pressure Sensor Readout

[DGiles]

HI. Im working on a test stand where i can measure chamber pressure of some motors. im going to use this sensor (https://shop.gag.com/motor-characterization/1600-psi-pressure-sensor.html). How does one connect a sensor like this to a computer where it can record? Im thinking Arduino is the way to go but wanted to see what people are using here. thanks

 

[drewnickel]

HI. Im working on a test stand where i can measure chamber pressure of some motors. im going to use this sensor (https://shop.gag.com/motor-characterization/1600-psi-pressure-sensor.html). How does one connect a sensor like this to a computer where it can record? Im thinking Arduino is the way to go but wanted to see what people are using here. thanks

Arduino and a serial data logging program like tera term would probably be easiest. Take the red wire from the transducer and hook it up to the 5V pin on the arduino, black wire to ground, and signal wire to one of the analog pins. Whatever the voltage range on the transducer is (e.g. 0-5V) will linearly scale with the applied pressure (so 0 psi returns 0 signal, 1600 psi would return a 5V signal). Use a loop to read the voltage off the analog pin and serial print to send that measurement to your computer, where it'll be logged to tera term and can be exported as a .txt file. You can turn the text file into a csv by formatting the serial print lines with comma delimiting, and can also print off a time stamp for each line with the millis() function on arduino.

 

[DGiles]

Arduino and a serial data logging program like tera term would probably be easiest. Take the red wire from the transducer and hook it up to the 5V pin on the arduino, black wire to ground, and signal wire to one of the analog pins. Whatever the voltage range on the transducer is (e.g. 0-5V) will linearly scale with the applied pressure (so 0 psi returns 0 signal, 1600 psi would return a 5V signal). Use a loop to read the voltage off the analog pin and serial print to send that measurement to your computer, where it'll be logged to tera term and can be exported as a .txt file. You can turn the text file into a csv by formatting the serial print lines with comma delimiting, and can also print off a time stamp for each line with the millis() function on arduino.

this sounds like exactly what im going for. im not following a lot of it though..... i wish i knew more and im hoping to learn. do you have any more "for dummy" resources i can look at to build out what youre talking about? i have an Arduino nano on order and the 2 sensors. now i just gotta put it together and program it.

 

[Spacedog49Krell]

this sounds like exactly what im going for. im not following a lot of it though..... i wish i knew more and im hoping to learn. do you have any more "for dummy" resources i can look at to build out what youre talking about? i have an Arduino nano on order and the 2 sensors. now i just gotta put it together and program it.

The Arduino Nano can record a timestamp and two channels of pressure/thrust data @500Hz. Write 100-200 loops to the SD card's internal buffer memory before closing the file. You lose ~25 data points per second waiting for the SD card to write the data to Flash, using the SdFat library. I feel a 5% loss of data at 500Hz is acceptable if you have limited buffer coding knowledge. If you know data buffering, I recommend the Nano RP2040 or ESP32. Those Nanos have adequate memory for data buffers or use an OpenLog or OpenLager for your data buffering needs.