Data acquisition product selection for UAVs

[Christos]

Hi,

I am interested in purchasing a data acquisition system to be installed on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

The system has to be compact and light. In addition, i would like to have an embedded controller with an installed operating system with the ability to run Labview. The sensors to use with will be imagers, temperature, humidity and pressure. I was wondering if i can use the cRIO with the addition of the required acquisition boards to import data from my sensors. Can you please direct me to the right  product?

Thank you,

Christos

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Christos:

I don't have any specific hardware recommendations, but this group is doing something similar with cRIO. Not sure about imaging capabilites.

-AK2DM

[cirrusio]

Christos,

I know that some folks here use the cRIO for flying instruments on the Global Hawk.   Laurel Watts is the person who is in charge of implementing the data acquisition system, so she might be a good person to get in touch with about this as I am not sure of all of the details.  Given that, this is possible and has been done before (the system that Laurel works on has been in use for a while and seems to be robust).  You will need Labview RT and FPGA for this obviously.  For communication, you will have a computer that will serve as the host while the cRIO will perform as the target.  The cRIO will accept user interactions through a networked connection or it may run headless.

Cheers, Matt 

[Robbob]

Christos,

Many UAV developers are concerned on weight...while the cRIO platform is a perfect match for this setup, the enclosure is industrially rated and a little on the heavy side.  To reduce weight, I would recommend the sbRIO-9632 Single Board RIO as it is only 9.5 oz.  This is targeted more for the OEM market, as the developer would have to provide a suitable enclosure for it and we do not give it any certifications/ratings on it compared to the CompactRIO.

The great thing is that the 9632 has three modules built into it already, an analog input, an analog output, and 110 digital lines.  It also has a serial port that can be used with a GPS device (I have done this in the past with an OEM Garmin product) and some flash memory to log data during the flight.

The sbRIO and cRIO platforms run LV real-time and a Xilinx FPGA. You would have to program both to be successful with this project. Let me know if you have any questions.  If you were serious about this, we could set up a time to talk as well.

Message Edited by Robbob on 10-08-2009 01:35 PM

[Christos]

Hi, thanks for your useful information. I am considering both solutions (cRIO and sbRIO). If i understand correctly both solutions will need about the same programming developement. I was wondering though which one will be the most flexible one. For example, when i want to add a camera with either camera link or other video out. Which one will be able to let me add that module to accomplish such a task. I am also planning to use various other sensors for meteorological  measurements. In addition i will like to have the option of adding a solid state hard-drive for data storage. Will both of these controllers support my requirements?

Thank you,

Christos

[Robbob]

Christos,

For cameras, neither of these boards will directly support them. Unless you get a serial(rs232 - one built in port or rs485/422 - you would need a 9871 module which requires extensive fpga programming) camera that can transfer the data.  You may want to look into a CVS for something like that, although I will admit my knowledge on that product is limited.  Some cRIOs have a built-in USB port, but this will only support mass storage devices, not USB cameras and such.

For storage, as mentioned before, you can use USB mass storage devices on some cRIO's with a built in USB(ie the 9014, 9022, 9024).  If this does not appeal to you, we sell an SD card module(2x4GB cards) for additional storage.

As for ease of programming, the cRIO platform allows you to use Scan Mode.  This allows you to quickly take in data from modules to the RT platform without any FPGA programming(some modules still require some fpga programming, like the 9871 and 9802 mentioned earlier).  The limitation is that acquisition rates are capped at 1kS/s

 I hope this helps. What sort of camera were you planning on deploying?

[speleato]

MoviMED makes an analog frame grabber for cRIO and sbRIO.

Sebastian

[Christos]

I was wondering if there is an add-on module that will allow me to use a camera link interface with either the cRIO or the sbRIO.

Thank you,

Christos

[Christos]

One more question, will the Gigabit Ethernet port of the cRIO allow acquisition from Gigabit Ethernet Cameras?

Thank you,

Christos

[Hueter]

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Christos wrote:

One more question, will the Gigabit Ethernet port of the cRIO allow acquisition from Gigabit Ethernet Cameras?

Thank you,

Christos

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Christos

The Ethernet port is not the limitation in this case. Compact RIO's are based on one of two real-time OS's (Pharlap for the 9002 and 9004 and VX Works for everything else) so the limitation will be in the driver. If you can find a compatable Real-Time driver, and you can interface with the driver from LabVIEW Real-Time, then you should be able to read data from the camera.