-------------------------Monitor------------------------
The Newsletter for PC-Based Data Acquisition and Control
Issue 176 www.windmill.co.uk March 2013
--------------------ISSN 1472-0221----------------------
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CONTENTS
========
* Get Data from Even more Instruments with Enhanced Windmill
* Excel Corner: How to Exclude Extreme Data Values from a Mean
* DAQ News Round-up
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Get Data from Even more Instruments with Enhanced Windmill
________________________________________________________
In January we announced the launch of
Enhanced Windmill, which included all
our software for just £295. We are
pleased to say that you can now use
Enhanced Windmill to get data from even
more instruments and devices.
Up until now, Enhanced Windmill could communicate with
data acquisition hardware over Ethernet, Internet, USB,
RS-232, RS-422, RS-485 and Modbus. We've added the
Harvester driver to the package, which means that
Enhanced Windmill can now get data from any instrument
that can act as a DDE Server.
This opens up your system to many more data sources.
For example: instrument software from Malvern Industries,
Quizix (Pumpworks), Bronkhorst, Texas Weather Instruments,
GE Measurement and Control, Point Six Wireless, Eagle
Technology, Hexatec, Omega Engineering, Wonderware,
Echelon, fieldbus networks and others.
Harvester handles up to 10 device drivers or Windows
applications at once. It supports up to 100 input
and output channels.
*
Clients and Servers?
====================
Software engaging in DDE conversations are often
referred to as clients and servers. A server always
responds to requests, or commands, from a client.
The standard Windmill programs can act as DDE servers,
but not as clients. Harvester, however, turns Windmill
into a client which can draw in data from any software
acting as a DDE server.
*
Example Application:
Logging Data from a Particle Analyser
=====================================
A measurement and control system often involves several
different types of instrument from several different
manufacturers. The software must be able to cope with
all these variations
One example of this is using a particle analyser (from
Malvern Instruments) under computer control. The
analyser's own internal software decides when it
needs a sample of liquid and sends this request to
the Harvester driver. Harvester tells the Windmill
control software to turn on a pump, supplying exactly
the right amount of liquid to the particle analyser.
The analyser sends its results to Harvester which
passes them to Windmill to be logged and displayed
alongside data from other parts of the system.
*
Getting Hold of Harvester
=========================
Harvester comes free with Enhanced Windmill. You can
also add it to the standard Windmill package at a
cost of £195.
*
Further Reading:
================
Enhanced Windmill
https://www.windmillsoft.com/daqshop/
More About Harvester
https://www.windmillsoft.com/daqshop/dde.html
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Excel Corner: How to Exclude Extreme Data Values from a Mean
________________________________________________________
There are often times when you want to calcuate the mean
or average of a set of readings, but exclude the most
extreme readings. One way to do this in Excel is to use
the TRIMMEAN function. This calculates the mean but
excludes a % of readings: the highest and lowest
readings to be precise.
The syntax is:
TRIMMEAN(array,percent)
where array is your set of readings and percent the
amount to discard. Example, TRIMMEAN(a1:a100,10%)
For example, if you chose to discard 10% of 100 readings,
10 readings would be discarded: the 5 highest and the
5 lowest.
If your percentage does not give an even number of
discards, Excel rounds it down. For example, discarding
3% of 100 readings would mean Excel removed 1 high
reading and 1 low reading.
Read more tips and tricks for Excel at
https://www.windmill.co.uk/excel/excel-tips.html
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________________________________________________________
DAQ News Round-up
________________________________________________________
Welcome to our round-up of the data acquisition and
control news. If you would like to receive more
timely DAQ news updates then grab our RSS newsfeed
at https://www.windmillsoft.com/monitor.xml. Read
https://www.windmill.co.uk/newsfeed.php for notes
on how to display the news on your own web site or
automatically tweet it.
A fiasco after five years of work on ISA100.12
The ISA100.12 subcommittee co-chair Dick Caro has
announced that ISA100.12 has abandoned its work
after four years without finding a single convergence
solution for wireless instrumentation, according to
the Industrial Automation and Process Control Insider.
Source: Industrial Automation and Process Control Insider
http://nickdenbow.wordpress.com/
Researchers Develop Real-Time Secondhand Smoke Sensor
Dartmouth College researchers have invented the first
ever secondhand tobacco smoke sensor that records data
in real time, a new study in the journal Nicotine and
Tobacco Research shows.
Source: Eureka Alert
http://www.eurekalert.org/
Short-Range Wireless Technology IC Market to Grow
The total market for open short-range wireless
technology based ICs, i.e. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee,
NFC and GPS, is expected to reach almost 5 billion
units in 2013 and grow to nearly 8 billion by 2018,
according to a report by ABI Research. It is
industrial applications that will be the major
growth drivers over the next 10 years.
Source: ABI Research
http://www.abiresearch.com/
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