So, I spent a few hours becoming familiar with the DAQ last night. As expected, getting things going will be a bit of a struggle. I struggled for 3 hours to get a single signal to be registered in the device. The great thing is the device comes with a piece of software specifically for such experimentation. Another great thing is that I accomplished getting the device to register the signal using one of the sensors I purchased. I learned also sorts of interesting and very frustrating "features" of the device. Most importantly, I didn't smash it with a hammer out of frustration.
I originally attempted to update some sample code to accomplish the method I was expecting to use to count pulses and track elapsed time. Boy, what a miserable failure that was. Of course, I had to pick the most robust, complicated method to attempt this. As my luck always has it, the device does not behave at all as I expected it would. So, my example results incremented wildly without any rhyme or reason.
I gave testing a rest at 11pm since I had to be up at 5am for a session of simulated hill climbing and sprinting in spin class.
I've formulate my new plan of attack. This will provide at minimum 1/100th of a second accuracy in the timing. Not the accuracy I was hoping for but, it'll do. Then, it'll just be a matter of whether the sensors will pick up each wheel rotation, bounce and cause double counts and/or the length of wire intend to use will be too long.
Haven't failed yet. Hopefully, this will be the roughest patch.
