Low Cost Data Acquisition for Racing Applications

In the increasingly complex and expensive arena of motor sport, data acquisition has become an essential tool of today's race engineer. With the limited budget and testing time available to most Formula SAE teams, a more effective data acquisition system, compared to off the shelf models, is needed. Therefore, a wireless data acquisition system was created to help improve the performance of the University of Calgary Formula SAE racecar. Our objective was to design and build a system that enabled the team to test and measure the vehicle performance in real-time. This live system will allow any race team to analyze the data prior to the car entering the pits allowing for appropriate modifications to be made at this time. This greatly reduces the number of pit stops and track time required to arrive at the optimum setup. The system has also been used as a driver aid. This has been accomplished by mounting sensors to the car's chassis, using prototype hardware to transmit and receive the data through a wireless link, and developing software to analyze and record the data.