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Data Logger Use in Environmental Monitoring
With worldwide concern about global climate change the use of data logger equipment to monitor a wide range of environmental factors such as temperature, solar radiation, rainfall, and water table levels is becoming increasingly prevalent.
Many modern data logger models offer long operation on internal batteries coupled with multi channel universal input capability. This makes them ideal for use in the field with a variety of environmental sensors. The basic data logger inputs required for these sensors are listed below:
Data Logger Temperature Sensor Inputs
The three main types of temperature sensors are thermocouples, PT100 sensors and thermistors. Thermocouples require a data logger with high resolution and cold junction compensation. Thermocouples do not require external power making them ideal for use with data logger installations in remote locations. Thermistors are low cost and accurate, but are non linear so the data logger needs an internal look up table to read these devices accurately. PT100 sensors are very accurate, but as they are three wire devices many low cost data logger models are not compatible.
Data Logger Rain Gauge Inputs
A rain gauge is a barrel shaped device with a rain collector. The collector funnels the rain water onto a tipping bucket sensor. When the bucket fills up it tips, triggering a pulse from a reed switch to measure 0.2 of a millimeter of rainfall. A data logger must have a pulse input to work with a rain gauge.
Data Logger Inputs for Solar Radiation Sensors
Whilst many low cost data logger models can work with temperature sensors and rain gauges, the very low voltage output of solar radiation sensors can present a problem. With a typical range of 0-20 mV to represent a range of 0-2000 WM2 a data logger needs a very low measurement range and high resolution to take meaningful readings.
Data Logger inputs for Water Level Sensors
Water level sensors are usually submersible pressure sensor types or ultrasonic non contact. As most pressure based depth sensors require excitation the data logger needs to be able to power the sensor. Many data logger models have a five volt supply available for this type of sensor. For use with ultrasonic level sensors the data logger needs to be able to power a 4-20mA loop.
Data Logger Inputs for Wind Sensors
These are available with voltage, mA and serial outputs. Whilst most data logger types can handle voltage and current inputs few are able to read serial devices. The new generation of Omni Instruments data logger models support the serial protocols used by the latest wind sensors.
So it can be seen that for environmental monitoring applications it is important to select a data logger with multi channel input capability which is able to support a wide range of sensor inputs
Omni Instruments has many years of experience of providing data logger equipment for these applications and can also supply compatible sensors.
About the Author
Jim Furness is CEO of Omniinstruments Ltd, specialists in data logger and other instrumentation solutions
how windows detects incoming data on serial port?
I want to retrieve data from an external device connected to serial port. It sends me 45 bits of data. It's a card reader. How to retrieve that data? I am using vb.net as front end and vb access as back end.
The answer is too complex to explain here. Things like this are the subject of an entire book. First you need to look into RS-232 ports and the signals used for each pin on the port and understand what each of these signals does and what each is used for by the sending/terminal receiving/dataset devices. In the comm-i/o library, are function calls which you can use to manipulate and detect the various signals, send, and receive data. What you are looking for in the communications library are function calls which deal with a modem. Anything modem related can be of use because what you want to do is exactly what a terminal program (like telnet) does with a external modem and a telephone line. But, as I said, this topic is way too complex for this forum as it will take hours for you to do the homework and do the research to even start this task. You may be able to use the Windoze terminal program to open the port and read data. You have to know the communications parameters, baud rate, parity 7 or 8 bits, that kind of thing so you can set the parameters via the terminal program. Then, when you have the port configured correctly, try sending a command via the keyboard. I am assuming you have the command/response documentation. Anyway, for something like a card reader, it sends data without a prompt which means once you open the channel with the correct parameters and have the terminal program in full duplex mode, anything you type gets sent to the device and anything the device sends back is displayed in the terminal window in real time, and when you read a card, the data should appear in the terminal window. This serves the purpose of knowing that you can talk with the device only, and you can see what type of response you can expect when you get to the actual program later. Using the terminal program only serves to teach you how to use a program to set the configuration of the port to establish communications with an external device, like a modem or your card reader, not to do any useful work with real data.