The Glider Aerobatics Monitor (GAM) is capable of measuring the g-forces, rotation in angles/degrees in all three axes as well as track the GPS position of a glider.

Main objectives :

•It should measure the positive and negative g-forces (between -5 to +7g) experienced in at least one axis.
•Record the data at 5 times a second.
•Be able to store the data on a portable storage medium for at least an hour.
•The airspeed is another important parameter that needs to be recorded.
•Include the recording of yaw, pitch and roll rates.
•GPS position may be logged so that the flight path can be analysed.
•The system has to be battery powered which has to last for at least an hour.
•Program should be written to read all the recorded data and display it on a computer in a user friendly form.
•Must be compact to be able to fit in a glider.
•Must not cause any interference to the on board avionics or be affected by it.

Hardware

IMU 6 degrees of freedom (ADXL345 ITG3200)
MPXV4006 (Differential pressure sensor)
Fastrax UP500B GPS
2GB SD card and breakout board for SD-MMC

Software

Reads acceleration data at 50Hz, averages 10 readings for each data sample.
Reads gyro data at 50Hz, averages 10 readings for each data sample.
Reads voltage from pressure sensor, caluclates pressure and airspeed. Reads GPS NMEA sentences at 5Hz. Stores all this data on the SD card on a CSV and text file.

Custom software written in C# to read the CSV file on the SD card and plot a graph of acceleration in 3 axes vs time and angles/degrees in 3 axes vs time. The website http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ is used to convert the text file wil all the NMEA sentences to a KMZ file which can then be opened in Google Earth.