Measurement
One of the important parts of the Future Spark Team Challenge is figuring out a winner! To do this, we need to be able to measure the power output accurately to judge the competition.
As each competitor has their own generator, it is relatively easy to measure their power output with a few electrical components and the equation:
Power = Voltage x Current.
The inverter will hold all the generators at the same voltage so we need to measure the current coming from each competitor and one voltage sensor to measure the voltage of the system. With these measurements we’ll be able to tell the competitors how much power they’re generating, and how much the person next to them is making.
We used the LEM HX 05-NP current sensor to measure the current coming from the bikes and a Labjack U3 to capture the analog signals and send them to the computer.