Ok, Put on your thinking Caps. Question about monitoring a Non-DDEC engine

[Just Dallas]

Removed

[Len Silva]

That's easy, don't need nothin' but a check book.

you might want to add:

head temperature

exhaust temperature for each cylinder

coolant flow rate

coolant pressure

erroneous driver input

air box pressure

[WVA_NATIVE]

Ouch!!! I think I hurt myself on that one.

[buswarrior]

And a flight engineer to watch it all, or there'll be a loud noise out the front somewhere...

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[wildbob24]

Dallas,

You could probably adapt a high end data acquisition system designed for race cars, but by the time you got done, you could buy a ddec bus for a lot less money.

Bob

[junkman42]

Dallas, I was trying to find a system that would multiplex type k thermocouple signals so I could put a thermocouple in each exhaust port and have only one signal wire to the front of the bus!  I called Omega and all I could get from a young engineer was why would I want to do this.  I thought it would be the best monitoring system to keep a eye on engine operation!   When I figure out a way to do this I will post the results after I get it operating.  If someone has input on an off the shelf system by all means speak up.  Regards ,John

[stevet903]

Here are a couple of places to look at what is commercially available, but it's not cheap....

http://tunertools.com/proddetail.asp?prod=IN-3775

http://www.stackltd.com/engineering.html

http://www.motec.com.au/aboutdata/dataoverview/

Here's a source for I/O boards if you want to roll your own....

http://www.generalstandards.com/dataacquisition2.php

There are also a number of companies that make automotive data acquisition units that plug into an OBD-2 port which are fairly inexpensive, but you don't have OBD-2....

I wonder if you could get a DDEC IV (earlier versions don't have all the data you want) computer with the wiring harness and sensors, hook it all up (except the injectors of course) and use a Silverleaf VMSpc to read and log the data.  I'm sure the computer would turn on the check engine light without the injectors connected, but I don't know if the computer would continue to run and still log the rest of the data.

It may be worth giving Silverleaf a call - they are pretty sharp and may have some suggestions on how to do this

http://www.silverleafelectronics.com/

Interesting project though!!

[NewbeeMC9]

Everything you would need can be found here,

http://www.omega.com/


you may find stuff cheaper, but the handbooks are good for bookmarking.  like said earlier you may have to sort some stuff out on your own.

[WEC4104]

I'm thinking you are headed in the direction of LabVIEW and DAQ equipment...

http://lvug.emant.com/

http://www.emant.com/

[Tim Strommen]

...What I would like to know is how I would go about using the onboard laptop that I use for my GPS to monitor engine functions on my MUI 6-71...

Interesting to me because I was planning the same type of system...


From your and Len's suggestions:

RPM - either a photo-interupter or hall-effect sensor attached to a clocked counter

Fuel Flow - Check out the "floscan" products.

Fuel Use - See above, use one on the fuel-rail inlet on on the return subtract return from inlet to give you "consumed"

Fuel Temp - simple termistor or a digital temperature chip

Oil Pressure - many COTS sensors are available for this

Oil Temp - many COTS sensors are available for this

Coolant Temp - many COTS sensors are available for this

Air Inlet Temp - many COTS sensors are available for this

Air Inlet Restriction - Use a MAP sensor after the filter, this will give you vaccum

Speed - gear on the output shaft of transmission with either a photo-interupter or hall-effect sensor attached to a clocked counter

DC Electrical Output - analog to digital converter

Battery State of Charge - you need a temperature sensor on the batteries, a shunt on the main battery pole that ALL charging/discharging current goes through.  By watching how much power goes-into/comes-out-of the battery as well as the temperature of the battery and the battery's voltage you can fairly accurattely calculate the remaining charge.

cylinder head temperature (CHT) - a thermocouple crimped to a ring terminal, these are available "COTS" thanks to the aviation industry...

exhaust temperature for each cylinder - again, a thermocouple

coolant flow rate - many COTS sensors are available for this

coolant pressure - many COTS sensors are available for this

erroneous driver input - I think we can expand this to:

• Steering input - using an absolute rotary encoder
• Throttle request - an absolute rotary encoder on either the treadle or the actual throlle input on the engine
• Braking request - this can be either a COTS pressure sensor on the air/hydraulic line or another absolute rotary encoder on the treadle
• Why not add a camera like the DriveCam system in the driving area, this way you get "black box" capabilities in an accident

air box pressure - many COTS sensors are available for this

You guys forgot to mention the system air pressure, for which many COTS sensors are available, and brake temperature which can be done with PIR "non-contact pyrometers".

...And, not just monitor, but record, and extract performance graphs from the information collected in order to make changes to the engine, electrical system (both chassis and house, DC and AC), heating system, cooling system...

...What would be needed to interface the above systems with the existing computer?...

At the very least, you need a way into the machine, and a tool/program to take the data and save it to the hard drive.  Most of the above sensors are analog (pressure, temperature, position) while some can be digital (temperaure, speed, position).  To easily get data into a computer look at USB to serial adapters.  These are dirt cheap, very common (as are the drivers), and ridiculously easy to make programs for.  This will require converting all of the "analog" data into "digital", which can be done with one or more chips - you need to look at how much resolution you need once the data is digital and how often the data is collected (the higher resolution, faster sample rate Analog-to-Digital-Converters {ADCs} are more expensive than the slower more coarse ADCs).

Without designing the thing for you, I'd say 12-bit data is probably fine for all of your needs (divde your range into 4096 steps), and sampling at no more than 1kHz is probably overkill already for a mechanical system.

Once you get the data digital, you'll need to package it in 8-bit bytes for serial transmission which will need either a microprocessor or a CPLD/FPGA running some code, and then unpackage the data once on the computer and store it in a file.  You can use a free scripting tool like AutoIt in Windows to make a program that reads the data from the serial port and writes it to a file, plus it also allows you to make Graphical-User-Intefaces (GUIs) for direct interaction (make graphs, and even suggest options to the operator using programmed intelligence and descision trees...).  AutoIt is also really neat because it allows you to rip data from other applications running in Windows (like a GPS application for position data), and you can do network things like capture picture from PoE network Webcams or USB HD-webcams (you can save that picture with a "geo-tag" and upload that to a website or blog later - incidentally that can even be done automatically using another subroutine in the same script ).

Hope this is food for thought...

-T

[Len Silva]

With that much food for thought, my brain has become anorexic.

[BG6]

Look at some of the "glass cockpit" instruments used in homebuilt aircraft. 

http://www.mglavionics.com/

[cody]

Wow, it's all I can do to just use my GPS and chat here on the board while going down the road, I get enough typos as it is.

[Len Silva]

You don't have to monitor it all the time.  Obviously, such a system would have voice alerts of any potential problem.  You could also have voice query, "System, what is the oil pressure?"

[Don Fairchild]

Dallas; 

There are several engine Dyno programs out there that could probably be adapted to what your needs.

Go power and Dyno one come to mind. We set up our Dyno and we look at air flow in, turbo boost, air box pressure,
air box temp, fuel flow in and out, ( flow scan ) water temp, ambient temp, exhaust temp, engine rpm. when we were at SWRi we looked at ring temps, piston temps, blower rotor temps, and a host of other things that don't matter on the road.

Hope that helps

Don