Windmill Software Ltd
Windows Engineering Software

Interfacing a Sylvac Dial Gauge

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You can connect digital dial gauges (or digital indicators as they are also known) to a PC and automatically record all measurements.

How to connect a Sylvac Dial Gauge to a PC

To transfer data from the dial gauge to your PC you need some data acquisition software like Windmill. You could use the free Windmill 4.3 software with the LabIML driver - available to Monitor subscribers, or the newer and easier to use Windmill 6 with the COMIML driver.

You also need a Sylvac OPTO-RS cable. This is not only a cable, but an interface which converts the output of the gauge to a RS232 signal. Plug one end of the cable into the dial gauge and the other into a COM port of the PC.

If your PC does not have any COM ports you can use a USB-Serial converter.

There are three basic steps to setting Windmill to log data from a Sylvac gauge.

1. Run the Windmill ConfIML program and enter the gauge's communication settings.
2. Run the Windmill SetupIML program and choose a name and units for your data.
3. Run the Windmill DDE Panel or Logger program to display or save data.

Once you have configured the Windmill software you can in future go straight logging data.

One of our readers - Peter Rosenbeck of Linak A/S - has compiled a guide to using Windmill with a Sylvac dial gauge. You can download this from http://www.windmill.co.uk/sylvac.pdf

Windmill ConfIML

This program detects and saves a record of the hardware you want to use, in our case a Sylvac dial gauge.

1. Start ConfIML and Press the Add button.
2. Select LabIML RS232 ASCII Instrument Handler.
3. Type a name for the dial gauge, a description and enter 1 for the number of channels of data. Press OK.
4. Enter your instrument's settings as follows
   • Reading Protocol: Request/Response on Demand
   • Timeout: 1000
   • Instrument Idle Time: 0
   • Returned Message Length: 20
   • Instrument Initialisation String: Leave blank
   
5. Click the Channels button. Enter the instructions to extract the reading from the string of data sent by the gauge.
   • Make sure that Read channel is checked
   • Enter the engineering units your gauge will send data in, eg mm
   • You can ignore the maximum and minimum settings: these are just a guide for chart scaling etc.
   • Prompt string: the OPTO-RS interface will accept any character as a request to transmit the data value, so you can enter any letter you like here.
   • These two examples illustrate the format of data sent by a Sylvac gauge. <cr> is a carriage return
     +00.0000<cr>
     -000.000<cr>
     In the Reply Parse String enter: \I"+-"\E"\C013. This instructs Windmill to ignore everything until a + or a - sign occurs, and then to extract everything up to the carriage return.
   • Click OK to close the Channels box and then the Instruments box.
   
6. Enter these communications settings:
   • Baud: 4800
   • Data Bits: 7
   • Parity: Even
   • Flow control: None
   
7. Save your settings, close ConfIML and start SetupIML.

Windmill SetupIML

With the SetupIML program you can name your channel, set units, alarms and so on.

1. Choose to Create a New Setup and enter a name and description. This can be anything you like.
2. From the Device menu select LabIML.
3. Your data channels will be shown as a numbers like 10000, 10001. Double click a channel number.
4. Type name for your channel, eg Sylvac and make sure Enable for Input is checked.
5. Save your settings in a *.ims file, close SetupIML and run DDE Panel or Logger

Windmill DDE Panel and Logger

1. From the File menu select Load Hardware Setup and choose the *.ims file you just saved.
2. Connect your channels. You should see your data in DDE Panel.
3. Proceed similarly for the Logger 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 Sylvac receiver, right-click the LabIML icon on the tool bar and select "Debug Options".

If the LabIML Debug window says "Parsing Failed", go back to the ConfIML window and edit your Reply Parse String.

Note that with RS232 connections Windmill can collect data at speeds of up to 5 readings per second, or one reading every 0.2 seconds. Don't try to run Windmill any faster otherwise you may inadvertently slow the system down. To optimise collection speed:

• If you set any alarms with SetupIML, go back and turn them off
• In Logger, choose not to display data on screen.
• Close any programs that you are not currently using.

If you still have problems fill in the form on our FAQ page.

Success?

Have you successfully used Windmill with your dial gauge? We'd appreciate it if you would let us know about your project. Did you have any problems getting the system to work? How has the Windmill software helped your project?

Details of how you are using Windmill:

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