A low cost fast data acquisition system for capturing electric motor starting and dynamic load transients

The hardware design and operation of a microcontroller-based data acquisition system (herein referred to as the DAS) for electric motor transient measurements are presented. The system was designed around the PIC16F877, 8-bit microcontroller and applied for electric motor. The measurement system uses the current, torque and speed sensors. The data from these sensors is collected by means of serial analog to digital converter (ADC) and uploaded to a portable computer through the RS232 serial port for subsequent analysis. Plotting and data analysis is done using Matlab serial communication. Laboratory tests are carried out using developed DAS for capturing induction motor transients and comparisons of thease measured results against the standard DSO, scope corder and Matlab simulation results has shown a good agreement.