Virtual Instruments Cluster for Monitoring of Electric Vehicle Testing Platform

This paper presents the development of a Virtual Instruments Cluster (VIC) to display functional parameters of a stationary platform used for testing of Electric Vehicles (EV). The EV platform contains a 3-phase asynchronous 55 kW electric motor, a DC-AC motor controller, a 96 Volts LiFePO4 battery pack, a 3.3 kW battery charger and a Battery Management System (BMS). The electronic units exchange data between them using the automotive Controller Area Network (CAN) bus, to which a host computer is also connected. In order to get a real-time, comprehensive and intuitive way of monitoring the multitude of functional parameters of the EV testing platform, the proposed VIC is developed in LabVIEW and uses many graphical gauges. It receives all CAN frames from EV electronic units and decodes the information that user needs for. Also, different operating states and fault alarms of the EV testing platform are visually displayed in real-time. Finally, the virtual instrument can also store the acquired information from the CAN bus, which makes it a reliable tool for long-term monitoring and diagnosis of the EV testing platform.