SD Cards and Data logging with Arduino

Application Note
Executive Summary
This Application Note is written for new users to Arduino, and it is intended to help
users to get experience with basic PLC control of the Arduino microcontroller. Furthermore,
this application note will provide guideline on how to connect a SD card to the Arduino board
and achieve data logging process to record data from desired sensors.

Keyword
Arduino Uno
Arduino Software (IDE)
Sensor Reading

SD.h Arduino library

Data Logging

SD Card

Introduction
Nowadays, digital control systems are widely used in all industries and everyday life.
Sensor data acquisition and association are critical parts for digital control system. Data
recording is important for tracking the performance of the sensors and also improving the
digital control system. A safety system, for the team project related to this application note,
requires data recording to report any near-miss accidents’ information and also keeps records
of possible risk factors to help the industry to improve their safety in work environment. The
recorded data should be easy to read for anyone with or without technical knowledge in
microcontroller. Therefore, the data should be recorded within a SD card or USB and in a form
such as excel for easy access and understanding. It is also important to refresh the memory
card to enable for new data recording once a while.

Objective
In this application note, readers with or without knowledge of microcontroller should be
able to understand the process of basic data logging with Arduino Uno using SD card. Basic
instruction of setting up and operating an Arduino Uno chip will be introduced in this notes.
Also this application note will provide information on how to convert the signal from sensors to
a readable data form presented in Excel.
Issue
During the team project, team member need to design a safety system that can create a
safety cone around an operating crane hook and warn any person within a dangerous zone.
Team member uses a thermal sensor to create the cone of safety, and if anyone accidentally
enters the zone, signal will be send to the microcontroller then an output signal will trigger the
alarm. In this project, sensors need to be controlled by microcontroller and also data at each
time that alarm is triggered need to be recorded for future analyze and possible improvement
to the safety system. Data that’s been recorded need to be easy to access and in a form that’s
easy to understand and analyze for anyone. Also the memory storage of the data need to be
able to reset after a certain time period to enable enough space to write new data in.

Hardware
In order to accomplish a working system with operating sensors and data logging task,
users first need to get an Arduino Uno board (Figure 1) along with a standard USB cable (Figure
2).

Figure 1. Arduino Uno Board

Arduino is an open-source prototyping, it simplifies the amount of hardware and

software development you need to do in order to get a system running . The Arduino boards are
able to read inputs such like temperature measured with a sensor, distance between two
points, or a Twitter message and then turn it into an output such like activating a motor,
turning on an LED, publishing something online.
On the hardware side, Arduino platform already has the power and reset circuitry setup
as well as circuitry to program and communicate with the microcontroller over USB. In addition,
the I/O pins of the microcontroller are typically already fed out to sockets for easy access.
Datasheet is clear enough to find the correct pin for connection.
On the software side, Arduino provides its own libraries with functions and free codes
that make programming the microcontroller easier and save time from building supporting
circuity and writing low level codes. The Arduino software which is called IDE provides libraries
with functions that keep us from writing with C from very low level. Also the functions provided
by Arduino is easy to understand. The simplest of these are functions to control and read the
I/O pins rather than having to fiddle with the bus/bit masks normally used to interface with the
Arduino mega I/O. More useful are things such as being able to set I/O pins to PWM at a certain
duty cycle using a single command or doing Serial communication.

Figure 2. Standard USB cable

USB cable will be used to program the Arduino MEGA ADK board and supply power to
the board.
 Users will also need a breadboard (Figure 3) which is important for prototyping the
designed circuit

Figure 3. Breadboard

In order to test the performance of the controlled circuit, users can use resistors along
with LED to analyze the output of the circuit time by time.

Figure 4. Catalex Arduino Micro SD Adapter

Adapter combines a SD card slot with a 3.3V – 5V level shifter and a 3.3V voltage
regulator. This enables direct hookup to the Arduino’s SPI pins.
 Figure 5. Micro SD card and Adapter
Along with the Catalex Arduino Micro SD adapter, a micro SD card and Adapter for it will
needed as a memory storage to record data and read the data.
SD card need to be formatted into the FAT format before use. A 2 GB or less card can be
formatted in FAT or FAT32. Cards larger than 2 GB should be formatted in FAT32. Cards larger
than 32 GB should be formatted in exFAT. Formatting SD card into FAT on Windows system can
be done following the given instructions below:

1. Place the SD card into the SD card slot in the device

2. Press the Windows key + E on the keyboard to open Windows
Explorer/File Explorer
3. Click This PC (Windows 10 only)
4. Locate the Removable Disk icon representing the SD card
5. Right-click on the Removable Disk icon
6. Click on Format
7. Change Allocation unit size to Default allocation size
8. Ensure Quick Format is checked
9. Click Start
 Follow the datasheet and pin map of Arduino Uno, users should be able to connect
the SD card reader to the Arduino Uno along with the sensor.
Pins that need to be connected are given in Figure 7.

Figure 6. Connecting SD Card Reader

Figure 7. Connecting SD Card to Arduino Uno

Software
After connected the hardware, users now should start the software and coding for the
data logging purpose.
First of all, download the Arduino software (IDE) from Arduino official website for code
composing.

Code
For SD data logging, it is important to include SD.h library. The SD library allows for
reading from and writing to SD cards. It supports FAT16 and FAT32 file systems on standard SD
cards and SDHC cards.
The communication between the microcontroller and the SD card uses SPI, which takes
place on digital pins 11, 12, and 13 on Arduino Uno Board. Additionally, another pin must be
used to select the SD card. In this tutorial we will use hardware SS pin - pin 10 on Arduino Uno.
Note that even if you don't use the hardware SS pin, it must be left as an output or the SD
library won't work.
#include <SD.h> //Load SD card library

#include<SPI.h> //Load SPI Library

Then we will include Wire.h library for I2C communication. This library can be found and
downloaded online for free.
#include "Wire.h"

Define variable for temperature data.

float tempC; // Variable for holding temp in C

float tempF; // Variable for holding temp in F

Set the chipSelect pin for the SD card Reader

const int chipSelect = 4;

The following loop is a set-up function that will be used to check if the SD card is present
and initialize the SD card before future processing the data. This function will only happen once
when you start the program. If the card is not present, it will show that there’s an error with
the SD card and will stop the process to the future steps.
Also, in the setup(), call SD.begin(), naming pin 4 in this case as the CS pin. This pin varies
depending on the make of shield or board.
 void setup() {
// Open serial communications and wait for port to open:
Serial.begin(9600);
while (!Serial) {
; // wait for serial port to connect. Needed for native USB port only
}

Serial.print("Initializing SD card...");

// see if the card is present and can be initialized:

if (!SD.begin(4)) {
Serial.println("Card failed, or not present");
// don't do anything more:
return;
}
Serial.println("card initialized.");

At last, create a new file with SD.open() named "TempData.txt". FILE_WRITE enables
read and write access to the file, starting at the end. If a file "TempData.txt" was already on the
card, that file would be opened.

mySensorData = SD.open("TempData.txt", FILE_WRITE);

}

If the set-up loop initialized the SD card successfully, the serial screen will display card
initialized then process to the main function loop as shown below. In this loop, the code will
build and open a txt file on the SD card to store data that’s read from the sensors.
First of all, user should define the data that’s read from the thermal sensor which is
used in this project. The data should be recorded in Celsius according to the data sheet. Users
can transfer this temperature data into Fahrenheit for convenience.

void loop() {

tempC = mySensor.readTemperature(); // Read Temperature from BMP180

tempF = tempC*1.8 + 32.; // Convert degrees C to F

 Use the following command to display the data that’s read from the sensor on the serial
monitor given in Arduino IDE software. The given format below will make the data easier for
users to understand.
if (mySensorData) {

Serial.print("The Temp is: "); //Print Your results

Serial.print(tempF);

Serial.println(" degrees F");

Then use myFile.println() to write a string to the card, followed by a carriage return.
Once the content is written, close the file.
mySensorData.print(tempC); //write temperature data to card

mySensorData.print(","); //write a comma

mySensorData.print(tempF); //write temperature data to card

mySensorData.close(); //close the file

After edit the command code, check and verify the code with IDE make sure there’s no
error in the code then save it. It there’s any error, it should show on the bottom of the
command window, check the error and edit the code before future process. After the code is
checked and saved, user may connect the hardware (Figure 6.) to the PC that contains the
written code with a USB cable (Figure 2). Use IDE software to upload the code to Arduino Uno.
Open the Serial screen to monitor the performance of the Arduino.
Expected Results
After compile and run the code to Arduino, the code will first check if the SD card is
present and functioning. User should expect the selected sensor to write data into the selected
port on Arduino board under certain circumstance. The code should create a txt file on the SD
card. Remove the micro SD card and read it with SD adapter on PC, it should be easy to transfer
the data into excel format by “copy” and “paste”. By converting the data into excel, user can
generate more visualized plot with the recorded data.

Recommendation
Future improvement can be done to this design by inserting a RTC(Real-Time-Clock)
along with the design, this will provide more detailed information of the data such as the date
and time of the recorded data. The implementation of RTC will provide useful information to
better analyze recorded data.

Conclusion
This application note guided the user how to setup SD card data logging with Arduino
Uno following a step-by-step procedure. The tutorial also introduced how to format SD card
and use the SD.h library provided by Arduino. During the software section, it briefly explained
the command line and method to edit, compile and run a file. Through this application note,
user should have experience with some of the Arduino libraries. Further application of this data
logging method with other kind of sensors may use different library. A common sensor usually
has a written library online which is available for download. Overall, this application note
provides a basic method for data logging on SD card, further modification can be done to
record more detailed information.
Reference
1. Arduino.cc,. 'Arduino - Datalogger'. N.p., 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Datalogger

2. "Technology Tutorials." Technology Tutorials. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

http://www.toptechboy.com/arduino/arduino-lesson-21-log-sensor-data-to-an-sd-card/