Vehicle data acquisition covers a wide range of applications. This can be simple data acquisition system in the form of a test process, testing the engine temperature of a new automobile design.

However, vehicle data acquisition does not mean automobiles alone, but can include, race cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, aircraft, boats, and other transportation. Vehicle data acquisition is not just measurement of just gas or diesel engine parameters either.

In fact, with the proper sensors and signal condition, almost any parameter of a vehicle can be monitored, reported or controlled by using data acquisition products or systems.

Each vehicle application can be quite different. For data acquisition for a race card, one must consider, weight of the data acquisition components used as well as the fact that the intelligence (the computer) for continues monitoring will be remote from the race car.

For production testing or even prototype evaluation of vehicles (cars, trucks, etc.) the data acquisition requirements can be very demanding. This is made obvious from the fact that the types of parameters that would need to be measured include: Temperature (water, oil, transmission fluid, brakes, interior cooling system, exhaust), Pressure (engine compression, tire, cooling systems, oil), Vibration (chassis, engine, doors, hood, trunk, interior), Voltage (battery, lamps, relays, electric motors, fans, pumps, instrument panel), Flow (water, oil, transmission fluid, coolant, air). As you can see, a vehicle data acquisition system might include hundreds of data points.

Remote vehicle data acquisition, such as that found in an aircraft can be as vast in the number of data points that need to be monitored. In fact, this is not true just for the testing of these vehicles, but is need on a continuing basis to monitor the overall health of these complicated systems.

Depending on the application demands, data acquisition systems can be adapted for 100’s or 1,000’s of test points by using expansion chassis and multiplexing boards.

Measurement Computing Corporation offers the largest selection of PC-based data acquisition and measurement products. Shop our online catalog by selecting a category above. From PCI, USB, PC/104, ISA, and PCMCIA bus boards to external systems based on USB, RS-232, RS-422, RS-485, and GPIB interfaces; Measurement Computing has everything you need for your PC-based data acquisition and control applications.