Multi-sensor multi-protocol acquisition system for luxury-yacht production test and characterization

This paper describes a multi-sensor acquisition system, capable of acquiring data and decoding digital protocols from many different electronic controlled systems installed on-board a luxury motor yacht, with a single hardware-software unit. The acquisition system is remotely connected to the company yacht database, so that it is automatically configured to handle the production test of a specific model among hundreds of possible different yachts, each one with its specific sensor and subsystem configuration. It consists of a hardware section (a PC provided with several converters that make the data available on a USB bus) and a software package that collects the data, decodes the digital protocols (NMEA 0183, CAN J1939, TCP/IP, etc.) and provides a common interface for visualization, data storage and test management. A wireless 2-axis inclinometer, not available on board, has also been designed, realized and integrated as a further sensor to be acquired. The acquisition system has extensively been utilized in the characterization of many different models and has proved a significant improvement in the yacht production tests, making this phase rigorous, documented, shorter and thus much cheaper and efficient than before.