Bridge Contest Electronics and Software
Using a Vernier Software Force Plate in conjunction with Logger Pro made it relatively simple to create nice graphical display of the force data. I found it helpful to display both the current force held by the bridge as well as the maximum force. Adding the graph is a nice way to show the force over time and leads to nice discussions about "clean breaks" as opposed to slow breaks.
The software is quite simple- Logger Pro reads the data from the force plate 250 times per second. I convert the data to pounds of force and then find the maximum reading. These two data points are displayed along with the graph. The software collects for a minute which should be plenty of time to test the bridge.
Here's a quick screenshot- click for a bigger version. When testing a bridge the appropriate numbers would display in the gauges and the graph would populate with data
