Windmill Software Ltd
Windows Engineering Software

Installing the LabIML Serial Driver

Home
Newsletters
Catalogue
Search

LabIML Technical Support Checklist

LabIML is the Windmill 4.3 serial driver which is free to our newsletter subscribers.

Once you have unpacked and installed your Windmill programs, follow these steps. You only need to do this the first time you use Windmill. From then on you can simply load the Logging and Charting programs.

1. Run Windmill ConfIML. This detects the device drivers on your computer (such as LabIML for serial devices) and lets you select the appropriate settings for these drivers.
2. In ConfIML press the Add button and select the LabIML RS232 ASCII Instrument Handler.
3. Type the name of your instrument and the number of channels of data you want to collect. If you were collecting latitude, longitude and depth readings for example, you would need 3 channels.
4. Choose the Reading Protocol of your instrument.
   - If your instrument automatically sends data at regular intervals choose Continuous flow.
   - If your instrument needs a command before supplying data choose Request/Response.
5. You can often leave the other instrument settings at the defaults, but here is what they mean.

   Initialisation String

   An Initialisation message is sent when LabIML loads, and only then. It should contain any data you need to send just once to the instrument to configure it for use.

   Timeout (ms)

   The timeout is the number of milliseconds that the instrument driver will wait between sending out a prompt string and obtaining a reply. A reading error will be declared if this is exceeded. To avoid spurious timeouts set to between five and ten times the normal response time.

   Data persistence time

   Once data has been read from an instrument it is stored and returned as a valid reading until the persistence time has expired. Thereafter, with Request/Response instruments, an attempt to read it directly will cause a new reading to be taken. If you set the persistence time to 0, every channel reading will cause a complete message to be executed. With a longer persistence time the message need only be executed once and all channels can be obtained from the stored data. When reading in the background the persistence time should be longer than the instrument idle time. For continuous flow instruments the data persistence should be longer than the sampling rate.

   Instrument idle time: 100 ms

   Some instruments do not like being read from at too high a rate. This setting ensures a minimum time between messages. This is important in Background mode as it is used by the driver to determine the rate at which it reads the instrument.

6. You now need to define how to extract data. (Windmill doesn't just store the entire message: it extracts the relevant data from each message, directing each data item to a channel.) Press the Channels buttons and enter a Reply Parse string. You need to first locate the data and then extract it.
   When you are logging several types (channels) of data from an instrument that continually sends data, the parsing proceeds along the string for each channel. For a request/response instrument, the parser goes back to the beginning of the string each time for each channel.
   See "Parsing Data" for more information.
7. Enter your communication settings: baud rate, com port, etc. These should match those used by your instrument.
8. Save your settings and close ConfIML.
9. Run the SetupIML program. This lets you specify how you want to use your instrument. Select LabIML from the Device menu and double-click your channels to choose names, units, ranges and alarm levels.

You are now ready to use the Windmill logging, charting, display and control programs. In future you can go straight to using these Windmill programs without going through the setup procedure.

Troubleshooting

We have guides to configuring the software with specific instruments, including Mettler Toledo balance, Parallax BASIC Stamp and Transcell Digital Indicator. These are listed at http://www.windmill.co.uk/software.html#technicalsupport

If you are not getting data with Windmill, right-click the LabIML icon and choose "Debug Options" and select all checkboxes.

1. No data is shown in the window.
   You may have a communications problem.
   See "Trouble-Shooting Serial Port Communications".
2. Data is there but the window says "Parsing Failed"?
   When your instument sends a message it doesn't just send one data reading. Its string of characters may contain many different values, commas, time stamps, identifiers and so on. You need to "parse" the message to extract just the data items in which you are interested.
   1. Close all Windmill programs and IML Device icons.
   2. In ConfIML select your instrument.
   3. Press the Settings button.
   4. Press the Channels button and enter the Reply Parse String. Note that when parsing data you need to:
      • Locate the position of the data in the message string
      • Extract the data to be logged.
   For more information see our Parsing Help page.
3. Characters are being extracted but it is not the data you want.
   Proceed as above and edit your data extraction instructions. See the Parsing Help page for more details.

You might also find our Technical Support FAQ and Installation Guide useful.

If you are still having problems get in touch. Please give as much information as possible, including what steps you have taken so far.

Version of Windows: 


Make and model of instrument:


Example data string


What are you trying to do?


Problem:

Name:        
Organisation:
Email:       

Home | Windmill Programs | Monitor | On-Line Shop | Free Literature and Software Demos | Contents | Search

Copyright Windmill Software Ltd 2001 PO Box 58, North District Office, Manchester, M8 8QR, UK. E-mail, Tel: +44 161 833 2782 http://www.windmill.co.uk/gps.html  Free measurement news feed... Designed by Studholme.net

Related Topics: LabIML RS232 Driver Technical Support FAQ Setup Library Monitor #52 - NMEA COMIML RS232 Driver Windmill