eg, see the car go over a large bump at 1.26, refer to graph at 1.26 to see how the suspension behaves.

 

That's what I was planning..

 

Probably a resolution of 256 woud be fine for most of the sensors, this is rallying after all!

 

They've got amazing stuff in the Ebay shop- I wish I knew as much about electronics as I do about cars! Do you think a raspberry pi would do it? I was keen when I read about them being a tiny $25 computer, but I see they're $80 in Aussie.

 

So much to learn!

Arduino's are geared for IO and would be quite easy to hook up for logging, as is the development of the appropriate software. The Pi is more of a mini PC. While more powerful, I'm pretty sure it only has USB which is not so user friendly when it comes to hooking things up, so you'd need a daughter board of some sort to do the actual logging.

 

I wouldn't bother with just buying the chips, when you can get a ready to go board for $15-20. I know we're reinventing the wheel, but that much? ;)

 

Another thing I'd mused over, if you can stretch the budget get one of the Android compatible Arduino ADK boards. Then get a cheap second hand mobile with the necessary support. Mount the mobile for video and G sensing and then run it to the ADK board via USB permanently so you can program a clock for them all to run from. You could also use the phone for logging, most take a micro SD card so you could fill it with a load of storage for cheap. It's also cheap to get a 12V USB charger to plug into the cig lighter or similar.

 

Of course I have a software background, so everything to me looks like a software problem. :)

 

The hardest part is finding a compatible handset. The original Google Nexus seemed to be the best option, coming with the correct libraries installed.

 

Disclaimer: I've not tried to actually do any of this, just spent a lot of time mulling it over. I see no reason why it shouldn't work though :)

That sounds terribly simple! Swipe Steve's phone and mount it with the Arduino boards on the bottom of the drench container under the roof vent!

 

Argh! Trying to read Arduino and Google pages this late at night does my head in!

The phone idea would kill a few birds with a single stone. G sensing, data storage and video. I imagine if you wanted to get particularly involved you could write an app to send the data to another android and then you have telemetry too.

Androino! Control an Arduino from your Android device using a

 

cheap bluetooth module.

 

This instructable shows you how to read sensor values from an Arduino with your Android device using a cheap bluetooth serial device you can order for under $10 on dealextreme or ebay.

This example uses Python as the scripting language for the Android scripting layer (SL4A) but you can choose from other languages like Perl, Lua, JavaScript etc

 

...sadly followed by 45 comments from people who can or can't get it to work correctly.. I think I'll investigate our local TAFE for any keen young man who wants to get involved with rallycars.

My preference would be a wired connection. Bluetooth can be a bit flaky.