Working to create a data acquisition system for a custom off-road vehicle. Using Raspberry Pi and a custom tachometer (tested and confirmed working) to measure RPM. Using interrupts in the following code to get RPM value.
def get_rpm():
GPIO.wait_for_edge(17, GPIO.FALLING)
start = time.time()
GPIO.wait_for_edge(17, GPIO.FALLING)
end = time.time()
duration = end - start
rpm = (1/duration)*60
return rpm
This code only works if the engine is running and producing a spark. If there is no spark, the code sits waiting for that edge and does not proceed. When calling get_rpm()
, if the code is waiting for an edge, this causes other processes to hang.
My intended workaround for this is to get the state of the engine in another process. I think it will work best in two parts.
Part 1, running (looped) in a separate thread:
GPIO.wait_for_edge(17, GPIO.RISING)
last = time.time
Part 2, running called as a function as needed:
def get_state():
while time.time - last < .5:
engine_state = true
else:
engine_state = false
return engine_state
With Part 1 saving last
to memory accessible to Part 2, Part 2 will determine whether or not the car is running based on the last time the spark plug sparked. Using engine_state
as a comparator, the data acquisition system will get and store the RPM value from get_rpm()
only when engine_state
is true.
How can I implement Part 1 in such a way that I can use the last
variable in Part 2? last
will be changing very, very quickly. I don't want to store it to a text file on the Raspberry Pi's SD card every time last
is updated. I want to store last
in RAM.
Thanks so much!