Windmill Software Ltd
Windows Engineering Software

Interfacing a Sartorius Balance

Home
Newsletters
Catalogue
Search

Windmill software lets you interface Sarorius balances, and other instruments with an RS232 serial port, to a PC running Windows. Our new Windmill 6 software is very easy to use and you can try before you buy. Alternatively, subscribers to the Monitor newsletter (ISSN 1472-0221) can download an earlier version for free.

This page helps you get started with the free Windmill 4.3 and LabIML software. (Configuration is similar but easier with Windmill 6.) There are three basic steps.

1. Run the Windmill ConfIML program and enter your balance's communication settings.
2. Run the Windmill SetupIML program and choose names 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 and SetupIML, you don't need to use these again and can go straight to the logging and display programs. More details on entering the configuration settings are below.

Note: Sartorius's RS-232 cable has a unique pin out: it is not a standard cable. You need to either purchase the correct cable from Sartorius, or re-wire the connections. See below for more details.

Run the Windmill ConfIML program

This detects and saves a record of the hardware you want to use. You need to add the LabIML ASCII instrument handler and enter your balances's communication settings. To do this

1. Press the Add button.
    
2. Select LabIML RS232 ASCII Instrument Handler.
    
3. Type a name for the balance, a description and enter how many channels of data you will be collecting. 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 the only value being measured.) Press OK.
    
4. Enter your instrument's settings. These should work for Sarorius 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 Manual. If not set to 60.
   • Instrument Initialisation String: Leave blank.
      
   
5. You now need to define how to extract data. To do this press the Channels button. 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 Manual for details of the command to send, and the format of the balance's reply. If you can't find this information, try these settings.
   • Prompt String: Escape followed by P. This looks like:
     \C027P
   • Parse String: The data string may be 12 characters long and look like this + 32.157 g (the missing characters are spaces). To extract the data you could search for the + and extract the characters after that until g. This looks like:
     \S"+"\E"g"
      
6. The next step is to enter your communications settings, again check your Manual for details of baud rate, flow control, etc. These settings should match those currently in use by the balance. If in doubt press the Help button for suggestions or start with these
   
7. Save your settings and close ConfIML. You may receive a message asking you to restart Windows. Ignore this but close any IML or Windmill icons on the Taskbar.

Now Run the Windmill SetupIML program

Here you can name your channel, set its units, any alarms and so on.

1. From the Device menu select LabIML.
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 grams to milligrams you'd enter 0.001 as the scale and 0 as the offset.
4. Save your settings in a *.ims file and close SetupIML.

Now open Windmill DDE Panel

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 by writing an Excel macro to read data from the Windmill DDE Panel. For more details see our Excel page.

Trouble-shooting

If you are having problems receiving data from your Sartorius balance, right-click the LabIML icon on the tool bar and select "Debug Options".

• If the LabIML Debug window says "Parsing Failed", you have not properly defined how to extract your data. Go back to the ConfIML window and adjust your Reply Parse String.
• If the LabIML Debug window shows no incoming data at all, you may have a cabling problem. Sartorius's RS-232 cable has a unique pin out: it is not a standard cable. You need to either purchase the correct cable from Sartorius, or re-wire the connections.

  Sartorius Connector		Standard RS-232 DB25 Connector
  Description:	Pin#	Pin#	Description:
  TxD Output	2	3	RxD Input
  RxD Input	3	2	TxD Output
  External Signal Signal Ground	4 14	7	Ground
  CTS Input	5	20	DTR Output
  DTR Output	20	5 6 8	CD DSR CTS Input
  Chassis Ground	1 (Optional)		No Connection

• If you are still having trouble fill in our technical support form.

  ---

  Success?

  Have you successfully used Windmill with your balance? Let us know about your project.

  Details of how you are using Windmill:
  
  Balance:       
  Name:          
  Organisation:  
  E-mail: