------------------------Monitor------------------------- The Newsletter for PC-Based Data Acquisition and Control Issue 41 www.windmill.co.uk December 2001 --------------------ISSN 1472-0221---------------------- Welcome to 2001's final edition of Monitor. We wish you a peaceful and prosperous New Year, and hope you enjoy the newsletter. Should you wish to cancel your free subscription, however, please go to https://www.windmill.co.uk/newsletter.html CONTENTS ======== * Windmill News: Windmill Monitors Fish Farming Research * Excel Corner: Labelling XY Scatter Charts * Data Acquisition Exhibitions ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Windmill News: Windmill Monitors Fish Farming Research ________________________________________________________ The Seafish Industries Research Station, in Scotland, is studying fish farming. To stay healthy the cod, hake, halibut and so on need a continuous flow of water. The Station therefore pumps 110 tons of seawater per hour into their tanks. Monitoring and maintaining this recirculating flow, and other environmental details, is essential. To ensure this they chose a Windmill Software system. The system measures water temperature, air temperature, water flow rate, dissolved oxygen concentration, salinity, pH, light level, water level and various alarm switches. Windmill provides mimic displays of the site showing pictures of the tanks and their current data values. Every 30 minutes the software logs the data to the computer's hard disk. Alarms sound and are telephoned to support staff should conditions not be optimum. The acquired data is broadcast over the site network using the Windmill Repeat program. This lets each department log their own data sets incorporating data gathered both locally and around the site. The Research Station needed a system that was reliable, expandable, easy-to-use and didn't cost the Earth. Windmill met all these requirements and is helping maintain a healthy fish population. For more details see our Monitoring Fish Farming application story or contact monitor@windmillsoft.com ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Excel Corner: Labelling XY Scatter Charts ________________________________________________________ In Excel you can choose from many types of chart. One of the most useful for scientists and engineers is the "xy scatter chart", where an independent variable is plotted on the x-axis and variables dependent upon this plotted on the y-axis. However, Excel does not make it easy for you to label the individual points. For example, imagine you have 20 sample points each with a latitude (x), longitude (y) and a temperature value. You would therefore have three columns of data: x, y and temperature. You want to label the x-y points with their temperature data. You could write your own macro to do this, but much simpler is to use one of the macros or utilities which are already available for download from the web. From Rob Bovey of Applications Professionals: The XY Chart Labeler A free add-in utility for Excel 5, 95, 97 and 2000. This is quick to install and easy-to-use: it adds an "XY Chart Labels" option to the Tools menu. You can automatically add labels to individual points or to an entire series at once. You can also move labels. Go to the Free Utilities section to download. http://www.appspro.com/ From John Walkenbach of J Walk & Associates: PUP 2000 For Excel 97, 2000 and 2002. This suite of utilities costs $39.95, but you can download a free 30-day trial. It comes with clear installation instructions and comprehensive on-line Help. Amongst other facilities, it lets you add, format and change the position of xy labels. An updated version will be available in January offering over 90 other utilities and functions plus 4 strategy games. http://spreadsheetpage.com/ From Add-ins.com For Excel 97, 2000, XP and 2003. An add-in costing $19.95. It allows you to easily re-arrange the labels, rename them, change their orientation or delete them. http://www.add-ins.com/ We hope you found this month's Excel corner useful. For details of getting real-world measurements into Excel see https://www.windmill.co.uk/excel/ For more tips on charting with Excel see https://www.windmill.co.uk/excel/excel-charting.html To download the free Windmill 4.3 and LabIML software, which lets you log, chart or send to Excel data from instruments with RS232 ports, just subscribe to this newsletter. ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Data Acquisition Exhibitions and Conferences ________________________________________________________ Every other month we list forthcoming exhibitions and conferences related to data acquisition and control. International Conference On Quality, Reliability and Control 26-28 December Mumbai India This conference covers automotive control, signal processing and expert systems. http://www.iitb.ac.in/ LabAutomation 2002 26-30 January Palm Springs California USA MTEC 13-14 February NEC Birmingham UK British event dedicated to sensors, measurement and instrumentation. http://www.mtec-info.co.uk/ ISA 13-14 March Burton-on-Trent UK ISA's first European instrumentation conference and exhibition, which it had postponded, is now scheduled for March. It comprises four conference sessions running parallel each day, plus a two-day exhibition. https://www.isa.org/ Science & Technology India 10-12 April 2002 Pragati Maidan New Delhi India Another rescheduled exhibition, this time combining Environment India, Water India, Instrumentation India and Industrial Automation India. http://www.exhibitionsindia.com/ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ * Copyright Windmill Software Ltd * Reprinting permitted with this notice included * For more articles see https://www.windmill.co.uk We are happy for you to copy and distribute this newsletter, and use extracts from it on your own web site or publication, providing the above notice is included and a link back to our website is in place. An archive of previous issues is at https://www.windmill.co.uk/newsletter.html and an index of articles at https://www.windmill.co.uk/newsletter.html Windmill Software Ltd, PO Box 58, North District Office, Manchester, M8 8QR, UK Telephone: +44 (0)161 834 6688 Facsimile: +44 (0)161 833 2190 E-mail: monitor@windmillsoft.com https://www.windmill.co.uk/ https://www.windmillsoft.com/
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