The latest news, tutorials and articles on data acquisition and control using personal computers. http://www.windmill.co.uk/ http://www.windmillsoft.com/wmicon.gif http://www.windmill.co.uk/ 64 64 Conceived as a reference manual for practicing engineers, instrument designers, service technicians and engineering students. Historical anecdotes as far back as Hellenistic times to modern scientists help illustrate in an entertaining manner ideas ranging from impractical inventions in history to those that have changed our lives. http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3211783806/1286 http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3211783806/1286 The global PLC market is in the early stages of a recovery following the sharp contraction of 2009. Although financial conditions have already improved more than expected during the second half of 2009, the global recession is not over, and response of global manufacturing industries is generally slower than the change in the general economy. As a result, the recovery of the market for PLCs, which are perceived to be in the first step toward complete factory automation, is expected to be slow, according to IMS Research http://tinyurl.com/plcmarket http://tinyurl.com/plcmarket Starting 9 March, it's National Electronics Week in South Africa. Includes exhibition of components, design + development, embedded, EMS, photonics + laser, production assembly, solar + green design, test + measurement and wireless. http://www.new-expo.co.uk/SAdefault.asp http://www.new-expo.co.uk/SAdefault.asp Three Northeastern University engineering students have developed a data-logging shirt for pitchers that can help prevent elbow injuries while providing an electronic analysis of pitching. http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/shirt-analyses-pitching-techniques/1001217.article http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/shirt-analyses-pitching-techniques/1001217.article 12th International trade fair of analytical, measurement and control technology is on in Warsaw, Poland from 3 to 5 March. http://tinyurl.com/yje9fha http://tinyurl.com/yje9fha A coil embedded in a wall or ceiling could efficiently beam power to several gadgets in the same room. Using magnetic induction to send electricity to devices is more efficient when more than one machine is involved. The researchers found that power transfer was 10 per cent more efficient with two devices receiving rather than one, regardless of how efficient the transfer was to begin with. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18521-more-is-merrier-for-wireless-power-supply.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18521-more-is-merrier-for-wireless-power-supply.html A new guide for process plant engineers - from an introductory tutorial to discussions of new and critical material for the new generation of smart plants: error-free process variable estimation, control, fault detection, instrumentation upgrade and maintenance optimisation. http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071604715/1286 http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071604715/1286 A saffron-coloured crystal could provide a step towards greener electronics. Some types of low-power computer memory store information using metals that are ferroelectric, meaning they form positive and negative poles when placed in an electric field. However, many of the more common metals used are either rare or toxic. Now Sachio Horiuchi at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Ibaraki, Japan, and colleagues have discovered ferroelectric behaviour in crystalline croconic acid, which contains just carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18503-organic-crystals-promise-lowpower-green-computing.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18503-organic-crystals-promise-lowpower-green-computing.html From 28 February to 5 March the conference on laboaratory science for all who use analytical instrumentation, equipment and techniques is on in Florida. http://www.pittcon.org/ http://www.pittcon.org/ Issue 138 of Monitor, the data acquisition and control newsletter, is now freely available on-line at http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor138.html. In this issue: survey, continually logging grape weight, DAQ news. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor138.html http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor138.html A pressure sensor that mimics the way a fish's lateral line works could help submersible craft navigate. The technology could improve underwater robots' ability to detect hazards, such as deep sea vents and shipwrecks, when the water is too murky for a camera to work effectively, or the object is too close for sonar, says Douglas Jones at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527455.500-fishy-sensors-could-keep-submersibles-out-of-trouble.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527455.500-fishy-sensors-could-keep-submersibles-out-of-trouble.html Conceived as a reference manual for practicing engineers, instrument designers, service technicians and engineering students. Historical anecdotes as far back as Hellenistic times to modern scientists help illustrate in an entertaining manner ideas ranging from impractical inventions in history to those that have changed our lives. http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3211783806/1286 http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3211783806/1286 The electric field generated by a passing tsunami could be picked up by seafloor cables that supply your broadband, providing a cheap alternative to existing warning systems. These use pressure sensors on the seafloor to detect the weight of a tsunami in the water column above. Only five countries own such sensor arrays - the US, Australia, Indonesia, Chile and Thailand - partly due to the high cost of installation. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18432-undersea-internet-cables-could-detect-tsunamis.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18432-undersea-internet-cables-could-detect-tsunamis.html The thin, smooth, crystalline sheets needed to make semiconductors, which are the foundation of modern computers, might be grown into smoother sheets by managing the random darting motions of the atomic particles that affect how the crystals grow. http://bit.ly/rss_crystal http://bit.ly/rss_crystal The second edition of Sensors Handbook is completely updated with new sensor breakthroughs. The first all-inclusive reference on sensors in industry and science. Helps engineers, scientists, medical researchers and technicians pinpoint the optimum sensor for any given application. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071605703/rss-21 http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071605703/rss-21 New acoustic sensors are helping monitor endangered North Atlantic right whales in an effort to reduce ship strikes, a leading cause of their deaths. Real-time sensors are mounted on surface buoys, usually anchored or cabled to the ocean bottom, or deployed as arrays towed from a surface vessel. Archival sensors are affixed on bottom-moored buoys equipped with hydrophones to continuously record ocean sounds for long periods of time, often up to three months, before the sensors are temporarily recovered and their batteries refreshed. Some archiving sensors are mounted on individual animals. http://www.news.scubatravel.co.uk/2010/01/acoustic-tools-help-whales.html http://www.news.scubatravel.co.uk/2010/01/acoustic-tools-help-whales.html A new step-by-step guide to dealing with noisy data acquisition systems, with particular reference to pH measurements. http://www.microlink.co.uk/debug.html http://www.microlink.co.uk/debug.html When you communicate with an instrument over RS232, you often have to send it a string of characters. It is not always obvious how to enter some of these but this table should help. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor120.html#ASCII http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor120.html#ASCII How to set Excel to send you an e-mail whenever one of its live data values goes into an alarm state. Plus how to get the live data into Excel from your sensors and instruments. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor117.html#Excel http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor117.html#Excel You can connect digital dial gauges (or digital indicators as they are also known) to a PC and automatically record all measurements. Read the new step-by-step guide on using the free Windmill data acquisition software to collect data from a Sylvac dial gauge. http://www.windmill.co.uk/sylvac.html http://www.windmill.co.uk/sylvac.html How to log data from a Garmin GPS, and other instruments, on your PC. http://www.windmill.co.uk/garmin.html http://www.windmill.co.uk/garmin.html Find out how to count the number of negative readings in a set of data, or the the number of readings which are between 20 and 30 oC. How can you use the COUNTIF function in your macros or count over scattered cells? http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor115.html#Excel http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor115.html#Excel Free Windmill software helps research into radioactivity at the Yucca mountain. http://www.windmill.co.uk/rock.html http://www.windmill.co.uk/rock.html Robert Kwiatkowski wanted to see his fuel consumption in real-time. Unfortunately his truck did not give him this information, so he designed his own fuel consumption monitoring system using the free Windmill data acquisition software. He connected his laptop to the On Board Diagnostics system of his Ford Expedition, used Windmill to collect data from the truck and Excel to calculate and display his current fuel consumption. http://www.windmill.co.uk/fuel.html http://www.windmill.co.uk/fuel.html Here are eight tips on successfully using a USB-Serial convertor for data acquisition on a Windows computer. http://www.engineeringtalk.com/news/win/win108.html http://www.engineeringtalk.com/news/win/win108.html Guide to using free software to continually collect readings from an NMEA instrument. Many instruments use NMEA messages to communicate with a computer, including GPS receivers, echo sounders and anemometers. You plug your device into the PC's COM port then run the free Windmill data acquisition software. Data can be transferred to Excel in real time. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor109.html#NMEA http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor109.html#NMEA Biodata are pleased to announce a new, low-cost, people counting system. Called Video Tally, the new system uses CCTV cameras and intelligent units to count people. The counts are collected on the PC every 5 seconds using Windows Software. With Video Tally you can see live, updating counts on your PC and at the same time view an historical record of logged data. Video Tally measures just 140 x 65 x 27 mm and weighs 150 g. http://www.videoturnstile.com/videotally.html http://www.videoturnstile.com/videotally.html Tips on using Excel for data acquisition: data logging with Excel, creating virtual instruments, showing live data in Excel forms, recovering data from corrupted worksheets... http://www.windmill.co.uk/excel.html http://www.windmill.co.uk/excel.html The new 751 SBox lets a PC monitor four strain gauges. It connects to the computer over a USB cable and comes with the Windmill data acquisition and control software suite. Windmill designed the SBox to be really easy to set-up and use. Putting everything in just one box means that it is ideal for mobile applications, or for moving from place to place. http://www.sensorsportal.com/HTML/DIGEST/april_07/Strain_gauges.htm Softpile.com, a leading provider of software downloads, awards comDebug its "Most Popular" award. This is based on the overall number of downloads from the Softpile site. comDebug lets you communicate with almost any RS232, RS422, RS485 or Modbus serial device. No programming is required, and its easy to diagnose any problems with your COM port connection. Softpile currently boasts over 8,200 freeware and shareware downloads. http://www.softpile.com/Education/Science/Review_07893_index.html COMIML lets Windows software read and control serial devices connected to the PC's COM port. These include such diverse equipment as electronic balances used in a laboratory, GPS receivers used in the field and data loggers used in process plant. The COMIML device driver can communicate over RS232, RS422, RS485 or Modbus. New checklist quickly gets you started logging and charting data from your serial instruments. http://www.windmill.co.uk/comiml_ts.html Receive the data acquisition and control news via your mobile phone. http://www.mobispine.com/MyMobispine/MyServices/SignUp.do?serviceId=11075 Windmill Software announces their 751 SBox which lets a PC monitor four strain gauges. It connects to the PC over a USB cable and comes with the Windmill data acquisition and control software suite. The SBox has been designed to be really easy to set up and use. http://www.buildingtalk.com/news/wnd/wnd100.html Let your PC monitor four strain gauges through the USB port. The new 751 SBox has been designed to be really easy to set up and use. Putting everything in just one box means that it is ideal for mobile applications or for moving from place to place. The Windmill data acquisition software comes free with the package. When the software takes a reading from a strain gauge bridge, it automatically monitors excitation voltage and calculates the measurement in microstrain. This eliminates errors due to changes in excitation voltage. You can also set a zero reference level and monitor changes relative to that level. An integrating analogue-to-digital converter reduces noise and the system automatically recalibrates itself. http://www.windmill.co.uk/751sbox.html Most analogue sensors produce a voltage, including thermocouples, strain gauge bridges and gas concentation probes. This is converted to a form the computer can understand by an analogue-to-digital (A-D) coverter. The input range (or gain range) of an A-D coverter refers to the maximum and minimum voltage that it can accept. You should always choose the smallest range that encompasses your signal, as this optimises the resolution. Although the resolution increases when you narrow the range, there is no point in trying to resolve signals below the noise level of the system: all you will get is unstable readings... http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor95.html#range If you have an instrument or device which you can plug into the PC's COM port, and it communicates using ASCII messages, chances are you can use the free Windmill software to collect its data. This is because Windmill's free LabIML driver was designed to be as flexible as possible and accommodate almost any instrument with an RS232 port. However, this flexibility has meant that the initial set up can be a case of trial and error. These notes should reduce the error and help you decide the best way to interpret, or parse, the messages from your instrument. http://www.windmill.co.uk/parse.html New article gives tips on measuring pH with a PC. pH electrodes have a very high output impedance and you cannot just connect them to a normal voltage input on your data acquisition unit. You will need instead to choose a DAQ unit that will amplify the signal to the appropriate level. http://www.microlink.co.uk/pH.html Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and temperature are increasing. Periods of low water availability are expected to increase in Mediterranean and other ecosystems. Researchers in Spain have simulated predicted increases in CO2 and temperature, and investigated the effects on crops. To monitor and control environmental conditions they used a Microlink 751 data acquisition unit which they connected to their PC's USB port. http://www.microlink.co.uk/climate.html Biodata new Video Turnstile people counting system designed for large-scale installations, monitoring hundreds of doorways. http://www.buildingtalk.com/news/bod/bod101.html Researcher Edward Winward at Loughborough University is investigating diesel engine fuels and lubricants, using the Windmill Logger application to continuously collect data for later processing. http://www.engineeringtalk.com/news/win/win105.html The BASIC Stamp is already noted for the ease it has brought to resolving control technology problems. Its use of the BASIC language with inbuilt control instructions can dramatically shorten industrial development time. The free Windmill software can read ASCII data and be configured to pass information directly to an application like Excel. http://www.windmill.co.uk/stamp.html Free software lets you automatically collect data from a Mettler Toledo balance. For PCs running Windows software like Excel. http://www.windmill.co.uk/mettler.html You can use the free OpenOffice suite of software to collect data from almost any measurement device with an RS232 port. http://www.windmill.co.uk/openoffice.html New tips on connecting measurement instruments and devices to the computer's COM port. Discover where to find free troubleshooting software, how to check the COM port is working correctly, what to do about cabling errors and which handshaking settings to use. http://www.windmill.co.uk/wiring.html#Serial Building managers can now connect automatic people counting systems to the PC over a WiFi wireless network. Previously, the people counters from Biodata were connected to the PC over RS232, RS485 or Ethernet cables, or via a modem. The new WiFi option speeds up installation and reduces cabling costs. http://www.buildingtalk.com/news/bod/bod100.html You can use instruments with RS232 ports over WiFi networks. To do this you need a serial device server. This will make your balance, GPS receiver, multimeter, fluorometer, force gauge, torque meter, etc. appear as if it were connected to the COM port. You can therefore use any data acquisition software which reads RS232 instruments to log data from your instrument, such as the Windmill COMIML software. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor82.html#RS232 Free Windmill software now lets you interface Transcell TI-500 digital indicators, and other instruments with an RS232 serial port, to a PC running Windows. A free data logging program can continuously collect readings, or data can be sent straight to other programs like Excel. http://www.windmill.co.uk/trancell.html E-Print ArXiv is a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server for research papers. It covers areas such as physics and related disciplines, mathematics, non-linear sciences and computer science. The e-prints on E-Print ArXiv are freely accessible for everyone. The E-Print ArXiv data in Scirus are retrieved through the Open Archives Initiative. http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/aboutus/#sources New product: you can now determine how long people spend in one place, and how many people visited that place. For example, stores can determine the effectiveness of a product displays or analyse waiting times at checkouts. The new dwell meter from Biodata Ltd counts the number of people entering and leaving a zone and records the duration of their stay. http://www.videoturnstile.com/dwell.html Every People Counting system bought from Biodata now includes free analysis and reporting software. Called VisitorTrends Lite, this is easy-to-use with a range of interactive charting and information options. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/2/prweb205619.php You can now use either php or Javascript to display this news on your own web pages. http://www.windmill.co.uk/newsfeed.html New: How to use Excel to log data up to 1000 times a second. http://www.windmill.co.uk/excel.html When underground water is contaminated by oil, environmental agencies need to find the source and extent of the pollution. Traditionally this has been difficult to establish but researchers at the University of Waterloo (Canada) are working on an answer. http://www.windmill.co.uk/oil.html Find out when you need RS232 handshaking, what it does and how to do it. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor74.html#handshaking See new tips on charting with Excel. For instance, find out how to scroll a chart and how to label individual data points on x-y charts. http://www.windmill.co.uk/xlchart.html The tutorial on using a computer to measure strain has been updated. Discover the 8 points you need to look for when monitoring strain and learn how strain gauges work. http://www.windmill.co.uk/strain.html Notes on interfacing Modbus devices and free software to trouble-shoot Modbus connections. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor72.html#Modbus New article on controlling digital equipment is now available. http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor71.html#control