Hello,
I have to choose diploma thesis and one of them is involving a capacitance sensor, which measure very small displacements. Basically its just PCB with traces which will be connected to oscilator circuit, from where I will be able to measure frequency with MCU. This MCU (probably STM32) will be connected to PC and probably will send via UART the number of pulses.
The displacement itself will be controlled by piezo actuators, which will move with the wall at very low resolution. This piezo actuators should be controlled with its controll box, which accepts some ASCII commands - the protocol is now actually unknown and I have to ask the manufacturer if he can provide me with more details.
So let's say I can controll the piezo actuaros with UART and communicate with STM32 via UART as well.
he procedure will be something like:
- move with the wall slightly (send commands via UART to piezo actuators controller)
- collect number of pulses from MCU (collect data via UART from MCU), collect this same data at least 5x (for filtering the data)
- save the actual relative position of the wall (displacement of the wall will be defined by the user (e.x. the wall will be moving in 0,001mm)), save 5 data of pulses.
- repeat this task up to 1mm (also user can define the max. relative displacement), so there will be e.x. some loop that will go 1000x
- now go back from 1mm to 0mm (if there is some hysteresis)
From collected datat (or directly during the measurement) create the graph - the static characteristic of the sensor, also some additional filtering of the data will be necessary, creating the equation the sensor (function of capacity on displacement - and from this make the inverse, so I would know the displacement from the capacity (and capacity is function of n. of pulses).
This is how it should work.
Sorry for my english if something is not clear. I hope you understand the idea of this task I've described, there will be probably some adjustments in the actual behavior of the system, because I heard the supervisor usually make some adjustments or wants to do something differently or add another tasks during the work. So the actuall described procedure might be slightly different.
Do you think I would be able to make this is labview, I dont have any experience with that, thats the reason why I'am asking. Sounds this task hard? How much time it could take to learn to do this task?
Thank you in advance.
