Monitor - ISSN 1472-0221
The Newsletter for Data Acquisition and Control
Issue 293 July/August 2023

Welcome to Monitor, thank you for subscribing. Windmill works with a vast range of hardware. Here's how to set it up for different communications. For your free copy of Windmill email monitor@windmillsoft.com.

You can download Monitor as a pdf file from https://www.windmill.co.uk/monitor/monitor293.pdf.

Contents

* Setting up Windmill with your Hardware
* Your DAQ Questions Answered: How to calibrate strain alignment of testing machines

Setting up Windmill with your Hardware

You can use any combination of hardware with Windmill data acquisition software, including devices communicating over USB, Ethernet, Internet, TCP/IP, Modbus, RS232, RS422 and RS485. No matter what makes of instruments you have, you use the same two Windmill applications to specify hardware settings: ConfIML and SetupIML. ConfIML records which hardware you have, and SetupIML lets you choose how you wish to use that hardware. (IML stands for Interface Management Language.)

Start with the Software Signal Generator

So you can use Windmill without any hardware complications, and see how Windmill works, we have provided a Software Signal Generator. This simulates signals coming from an actual instrument or device. You can use it with all the Windmill programs, who see it as just another piece of hardware sending data.

Recording your Hardware

To use Windmill with your hardware devices, the first program to run is ConfIML. It detects which drivers are on your computer (those for RS232, Ethernet, USB, etc) and lets you select the appropriate settings for these drivers.

Some drivers need very few settings. However, the RS232/RS485/Modbus/TCP-IP driver has many settings you can alter. This is because the driver is designed to work with many different types and makes of instrument. To choose these settings run the ComDebug program.

Tailor the System to Your Requirements

After using ConfIML to record the type of hardware you have - and, if necessary, ComDebug - open SetupIML. Now you can configure the system as you want it - for example specifying which engineering units all the other Windmill programs should use for a particular sensor or instrument.

SetupIML scans the hardware and builds a default setup file. Whereas ConfIML sees, for example, a device with 16 analogue input channels that can be used in any number of ways; SetupIML sees, for example, a device with 5 K-type thermocouples called Temperature1, Temperature2, etc, whose measurements should be between 0 and 100 degrees Celsius. SetupIML lets you change these settings, and others, for all types of hardware, no matter how connected to the PC.

No matter how large and diverse your data acquisition system, no matter how many different instruments and devices you have connected, you save the setup details for everything in one SetupIML file (*.ims). You can save a library of these setup files, making it very quick to switch between test rigs and experiments.

Logging and Charting

Once you have a setup file, you don't need to run ConfIML or SetupIML again. Simply open Windmill Logger or Chart, choose the setup file to use for this session, and start logging and charting. The data is shown in the engineering units of your choice, against the channel names you have entered, and if you have specified alarm settings, any violations of this threshold are shown in different colours.

To summarise: ConfIML specifies what hardware you have, eg serial and USB, and ComDebug defines serial communications. You only need to use these two programs during set-up.

SetupIML lets you choose how you wish to use your hardware and Logger and Chart save and show you the data.