Multi-physics environmental monitoring starter kit

In order to meet the requirements of sustainable social development, environmental protection has received more and more attention. Environmental monitoring technology based on modern measurement technology can measure and analyze various environmental parameters. It is an important means to study the trend of environmental quality changes and the basis of environmental protection. "- Li Cheng, Application Engineer of Shanghai Juxing Instrument Co., Ltd.

The Challenge:

Environmental monitoring requires the system to be able to monitor a variety of environmental parameters in harsh outdoor environments, including meteorology, vibration, noise, electromagnetic fields, images, etc. The main application areas include human settlement environment monitoring, structural health monitoring, and energy conservation and emission reduction project monitoring, and a distributed structure is required.

The Solution:

NI CompactRIO is an industrial-grade embedded data acquisition platform. The acquisition system developed based on this platform has good stability and real-time performance, and can adapt to the field working environment. We use NI CompactRIO's rich C series modules to collect analog signals output by various sensors and transmit them to the host computer through the TCP/IP protocol. The staff can monitor various environmental parameters in real time.

System structure and main features

The environmental monitoring starter package is developed based on NI's embedded hardware platform CompactRIO and the graphical design platform LabVIWE. The starter package structure is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Structure of the environmental monitoring starter package

Various environmental parameters are converted into electrical signals through corresponding sensors, and the electrical signals are input into CompactRIO through C series modules. CompactRIO processes the collected raw signals and sends the processed data to the monitoring end and network server through the router. The monitoring end communicates with CompactRIO through TCP/IP protocol to realize real-time display of data and sending of control commands. Users of the browsing end access the monitoring data in the server through a web browser to realize network sharing of data and historical data analysis.

The main features of the environmental monitoring starter package are:

customized FPGA modules and rich I/O modules, which can be easily connected to almost all sensors;
modular software structure, which can easily realize system maintenance and upgrade;
using WIFI and 3G technology to realize wireless transmission of monitoring data, which is conducive to distributed monitoring and data management.

Monitoring projects

The monitoring projects of the environmental monitoring starter package are as follows:

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System Specifications

1. CompactRIO Board Specifications

2. Monitoring indicators (standard, expandable)

Temperature: measuring range -5 ~ 55 ℃
Humidity: measuring range 0 ~ 100%
Vibration: measuring range ± 250g, frequency range 0.3 ~ 10KHz, sensitivity 20mV/g, minimum resolution 0.0005g
Sound: frequency range 20 ~ 20KHz, dynamic range 127dB, sensitivity 50mV/Pa
Electromagnetic wave: frequency range 10 ~ 20KHz

System indicators are mostly limited by the optional sensors. In order to lower the system threshold, the starter package uses lower-cost sensors, which can be applied to most verification and scientific research. If the user needs a higher-precision system, Juxing engineers can select higher-level sensors.

Physical picture and software interface

Figure 2 System diagram

Figure 3 System software interface

Summary

The environmental monitoring starter kit developed based on the NI CompactRIO platform can monitor a variety of environmental parameters, and the system has high reliability and scalability. Using NI's embedded hardware platform CompactRIO for system development can shorten the development cycle, improve system reliability, and allow users to focus on data analysis and processing.