Newbie with unusual application and lots of questions...

[VTGBoss]

I have an application where we will use an SUV to tow a heavy load and need to measure the velocity and the force needed to tow the load which will collected with a load cell with an analog output. The RaceCapture/Pro MK2 seems like it would do the job since it has the GPS telemetry, can calculate velocity and distance and accepts the analog output of the load cell.

During testing will star from a stop and slowly accelerate to 15 MPH and then slow down to a stop. We need to collect GPS location, velocity, distance travelled and analog output from the load cell whole the test in in progress and until data acquisition is stopped.

The software available seems to be an overkill for my simple test. Basically what I need is an application to do the following:

Have an option to configure the system, i.e. analog range, data directory, units, GPS setup, channels selected and others

For data acquisition prompts the user for:
- Location
- Test number
- Directory

Have a Start Test button than when pressed starts data acquisition of the 4 channels selected (GPS location, velocity, analog input (load cell), and distance travelled (maybe more in the future)

Display the selected channels are live on the screen (graph) while the test I being conducted and data acquisition is active

Have an Stop Test button that stop the data acquisition and dumps the data to a file (text, spreadsheet. CSV) with a name such as C:Directory\Location-TestNo.xls or C:Directory\Location-TestNo.txt to the directory specified in the configuration

Have the ability to graph the results in 3 or 4 pre-set formats at most, although if it can export the data as a CSV or spreadsheet format file. I can do this with another application.

My question is:

How easy/difficult would be to configure the available software to do what I need?
How easy/difficult would it be to write a custom application to do this?
How easy/difficult is to communicate with the system to do this?
Is the interface open source so anyone can write code for it?
Is there anyone that does this type of programming?

Any help. guidance. suggestions or advice you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

[toga94m]

Have an option to configure the system, i.e. analog range, data directory, units, GPS setup, channels selected and others

Display the selected channels are live on the screen (graph) while the test I being conducted and data acquisition is active

The existing app (on laptop or tablet or phone) will do this.

Have a Start Test button than when pressed starts data acquisition of the 4 channels selected (GPS location, velocity, analog input (load cell), and distance travelled (maybe more in the future)

Have an Stop Test button that stop the data acquisition and dumps the data to a file (text, spreadsheet. CSV) with a name such as C:Directory\Location-TestNo.xls or C:Directory\Location-TestNo.txt to the directory specified in the configuration

Physical start/stop pushbutton on the RCP hardware.

For data acquisition prompts the user for:
- Location
- Test number
- Directory

Pencil and paper. The datafiles are created with sequential filenames, but GPS timestamped, so you can correlate the files to your test runs.

Have the ability to graph the results in 3 or 4 pre-set formats at most, although if it can export the data as a CSV or spreadsheet format file. I can do this with another application.

Yup, exports as CSV on the SD card, then pop it in your laptop and into Excel/whatever for post-processing.

[VTGBoss]

Thanks Toga 94m for your reply and for confirming that the software can indeed do this.

I would be interested in an application that does just what I need without all the other features since the end user(s) will be people with little knowledge of software/hardware, and I would like to keep it very,very simple.

Is the code for the software or the interface/API available? Has anyone developed a simple application that would like to share the code or be interested in writing quick application for me, for a fee, of course?

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

[brentp]

Hello,

Thanks for your interest. We've emailed you directly for more information.

[VTGBoss]

Hello,

Thanks for your interest. We've emailed you directly for more information.

Thanks Brent, I received your e-mail and replied.