Low SWaP, In-Situ Data Logger for Strain Measurement of Paddlefish Rostrums in Motion

An embedded strain gage data logger has been developed by the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) to facilitate data collection for an in-situ experiment investigating the strain and acceleration encountered by the paddlefish rostrum as it swims. This unique application has required a focus on reducing the size, weight, and power (SWaP) of the system. The accomplishments explained in this paper are the integration of a custom strain gage amplifier with a microcontroller and the verification of a linear relationship of the strain measured by this device with a calibrated professional desktop system. The mean and standard deviation errors between the expected values of the calibrated commercial system and the data logger from this experiment are −7/.7 × 10
⁻¹⁴
μϵ and 14.3 μϵ respectively.