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-------------------------Monitor------------------------
The Newsletter for PC-Based Data Acquisition and Control
Issue 84 www.windmill.co.uk July 2005
--------------------ISSN 1472-0221----------------------
Welcome to July's edition of Monitor. We hope you find
the newsletter useful, but should you wish to cancel
your subscription you can do so at
http://www.windmill.co.uk/newsletter.html
CONTENTS
========
* Windmill Notes: Interfacing Mettler Toledo and Other
Electronic Balances
* Spreadsheet Corner: Using OpenOffice with Windmill
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
Windmill Notes:
Interfacing Mettler Toledo and Other Electronic Balances
________________________________________________________
Windmill software lets you interface Mettler Toledo and
other balances to a PC running Windows. To do this you
need a serial driver. We offer a choice of two. The
latest, Windmill 6 COMIML, is the easiest to use and
you can download a free version to check that it will
read data from your balance
(http://www.windmillsoft.com/comiml.html). Alternatively,
subscribers can download an earlier version of the driver
(LabIML 4.3) which will also save data.
There are three basic steps to getting data from your balance.
1. Run the Windmill ConfIML program (Windmill 4.3) or
comDebug (Windmill 6) and enter your balance's
communication settings.
2. Run the Windmill SetupIML program and choose a name
and units for your balance's data.
3. Run the Windmill DDE Panel, Logger or Chart program to
save or display data from your balance.
After you have entered your configuration settings with
ConfIML (or comDebug) and SetupIML, you don't need to use
these again and can go straight to the logging and
display programs.
*
Run the Windmill ConfIML or comDebug program
============================================
This detects and saves a record of the balance you
want to use.
Windmill 4.3: ConfIML
---------------------
In ConfIML you need to add the LabIML ASCII
instrument handler and enter your instrument's
communication settings. To do this
Press the Add button.
1. Select LabIML RS232 ASCII Instrument Handler.
2. Type a name for the balance and a description.
The name and description can be anything you
like. You will generally enter 1 as the number of
channels. (Each channel holds one type of data item:
in this case weight is usually the only value
being measured.) Press OK.
3. Enter your instrument's settings. These should work
for Mettler Toledo balances:
Reading Protocol: Request/Response On Demand
Timeout: 5000
Instrument Idle Time: 0
Returned Message Length: Count how many characters
are in the balance's message - you should find
this information in the balance's "Data Interface
Operating Instructions". If not set to 20.
Instrument Initialisation String: Leave blank.
4. Extracting Data
You now need to define how to extract data. In
ConfIML press the Channels button. Your settings
here depend upon how you have configured your
balance. Enter a command or prompt string to send
to the balance to ask for data, then enter parsing
instructions to extract the data value from the
balance's reply. Check your balance's Interface
Operating Instructions for details of the commands
to send, and the format of the balance's reply. For
example, to request a single stable value you
would set...
Prompt String: S followed by a Carriage Return
and a Line Feed. This looks like
S\C013\C010
To extract data from the balances reply you
might use...
The reply might look like this:
S S 100.0 g.
In which case you could ignore everything until a
number occurs and then extract everything until the
next space. Your parse string would look like:
\I"0123456789"\E" "
5. The next step is to enter your communications
settings. These should be the same as those used
by the balance: check the Mettler "Data Interface
Operating Instructions" for your model. If in doubt
start with 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity,
1 stop bit and no flow control.
6. Save your settings.
Windmill 6: comDebug
--------------------
1. Select "Create a New Instrument File" (or, if you
haven't purchased the COMIML driver, select "Use the
program as a Terminal Utility").
2. Select "Edit COM Port Settings". These should be
the same as those used by the balance: check the
Mettler "Data Interface Operating Instructions" for
your model. If in doubt start with 9600 baud,
8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit and no flow control.
3. Select "Add a New Message" to bring up the Terminal
screen. In the Prompt grid type your command string
as detailed in point 4 above.
4. Press the Send button. If all is well the instrumentĘs
reply is shown in the Reply grid.
5. You now need to extract data from the reply. Press
the Parse button and use the Add Action button to
pinpoint the location of the data in the reply. To
obtain the data use the Extract menu.
*
Run the Windmill SetupIML program (Versions 6 and 4.3)
======================================================
Here you can name your channel of data, set its units,
any alarms and so on.
1. From the Device menu select LabIML (or COMIML).
2. Your data channel will be shown as a number like
10000. Double click this channel.
3. Type name for your channel and make sure
Enable for Input is checked. If you want to change
the units enter an appropriate scale and offset. For
example, if you wanted to convert milligrams to grams
you'd enter 1000 as the scale and 0 as the offset.
4. Save your settings in a *.ims file and close SetupIML.
*
Open Windmill DDE Panel, Logger or Chart
========================================
1. From the File menu select Load Hardware Setup and
choose the *.ims file you just saved.
2. Connect your weight channel. You should see the
correct weight in DDE Panel.
3. Proceed similarly for the Logger and Chart programs.
*
Getting the data into Excel
===========================
You can use the Windmill Logger program to collect data,
and after collection has finished import it into Excel.
Alternatively, you can collect data with Excel in real-time.
For more details see http://www.windmill.co.uk/excel.html.
It isn't just Excel you can use, data collected by Windmill
can be fed into most spreadsheet or analysis programs.
For example the OpenOffice spreadsheet detailed below.
*
Further Reading
===============
Mettler Toledo Bidirectional Data Interface Operating Instructions
These describe in detail the commands and settings
available with the Mettler Toledo balances.
http://www.mt.com/
Interfacing a Mettler Toledo Balance
http://www.windmill.co.uk/mettler.html
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
Spreadsheet Corner: OpenOffice
________________________________________________________
I've renamed the Excel Corner this month, as it's about
an alternative spreadsheet: OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is an open-source office suite and therefore
free! You can open the data files saved by Windmill Logger
in OpenOffice like this...
1. In the OpenOffice spreadsheet, choose File - Open.
2. In the "Files of Type" box, select Text CSV.
3. In the File name box type *.wl and click the Open
button. Your saved Logger data files are shown.
Select one and clickOpen.
4. You will see the Text Import dialogue. Click OK.
5. The logged file is shown with the data lined up in
the appropriate columns.
Seeing Live Data in OpenOffice
==============================
The Windmill DDE Panel lets you copy and paste live data
into OpenOffice. Just press the Copy to Clipboard button
in the DDE Panel and choose the type of information you
want to copy: data values, channel names, data units,
alarm settings, etc. Move to OpenOffice, select
Paste Special from the Edit menu and choose to paste as
a link. The data in OpenOffice will continually update.
OpenOffice Functions
====================
Many of the functions of Excel are also available in
OpenOffice. For instance, in Issue 36 of Monitor
(http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor36.html) we explained
how to hide superfluous data using Excel's autofilter.
A similar autofilter tool is also available on
OpenOffice's Data menu.
Issue 44 (http://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor44.html)
described how to find when the largest data value
was logged. We used Excel's Match, Max and Index
functions, all of which are available in OpenOffice.
However, we specified a column of data by using B:B.
In OpenOffice you would use either named ranges or the
cell references - B1:B100 for example. You would also
use semi-colons in functions rather than commas. So the
INDEX(A:A,MATCH(MAX(B:B),B:B,0),1)
function described for Excel becomes
INDEX(A1:A100;MATCH(MAX(B1:B100);B1:B100;0);1)
in OpenOffice.
You can download OpenOffice from
http://www.openoffice.org/
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
* Copyright Windmill Software Ltd
* Reprinting permitted with this notice included
* For more articles see http://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
http://www.windmill.co.uk/newsletter.html
Windmill Software Ltd, PO Box 58, North District Office,
Manchester, M8 8QR, UK
Telephone: +44 (0)161 833 2782
Facsimile: +44 (0)161 833 2190
E-mail: monitor@windmill.co.uk
http://www.windmill.co.uk/
http://www.windmillsoft.com/
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