Design and implementation of a wireless telemetry system for a solar race car

In this research a telemetry system was designed, produced and tested. This system measures the strain and acceleration then transmits this data to a logger computer with wireless communication. Mainly, this research is based on measuring the dynamic local loads on a car rim. The local measurements that are taken with this telemetry system can help the mechanical designer to make their designs more strong, more economic and lighter. This telemetry system includes two parts. One of them is the measuring and transmitting circuit and the other is receiving circuit. On the measurement circuit there are four half-bridge strain gauge inputs, an accelerometer that is located in the middle of the circuit and a transceiver for data transmission. Measurement circuit includes an instrumentation amplifier for strain measurements. In this circuit, digital potentiometers are used for automatic calibration, offset settings and gain selections. Digital switches are used for strain gage selection. The circuits are designed in Proteus. Software of the PIC microcontroller is written in HITECH C. And the user interface is created in Microsoft Visual Studio. System was tested and calibrated on a universal testing machine. Then, the telemetry system was tested on the solar race car -SOLARIS of Dokuz Eylül University- on the real road conditions.