A Comprehensive Description of a Low-Cost Wireless Dynamic Real-Time Data Acquisition and Monitoring System

Abstract

Nowadays, low-cost sensors and acquisition devices have been emerging as an obvious solution to many innovative applications such as Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems. In this paper, issues regarding dynamic data acquisition, as well as their respective solutions, are presented. Moreover, a comprehensive description through-out an inexpensive sensor network system using opensource hardware for a real-time acceleration data acquisition has been presented. The platform consists of an accelerometer, an Arduino board, and a computer as a data recorder and presenter. Data is recorded through an efficient microcontroller code that can provide a considerable reading frequency (up to 300Hz). Using Python, instant acceleration recording for all the three axes has been done. It is shown how the performance of the proposed system is efficient for the field of SHM systems.