13
Example Application
Battery discharge
Ever wondered which commercial battery actually lasts the
longest The ADC-16 together with PicoLog is an ideal tool for
answering this question. This experiment requires the following
equipment:
ADC-16
ADC-16 Terminal Board
A selection of 1.5 volt (AA) batteries
Battery holders to accommodate the batteries
A load resistor for each battery
For this example, a 10 Ohm load resistor was chosen; this
provides a similar load to a flashlight. These resistors were
soldered into the ADC-16 terminal board and the batteries in
their holders were connected to channels 1 through 5.
PicoLog recorder was setup to monitor and record the batteries
as they discharge. As the experiment is set to last for several
hours a low sample rate of just once per minute was selected.
Each channel is given the name of the appropriate battery type.
Once setup is complete the graph displays readings in volts of
all five channels.
When the record button is pressed, the data logging experiment
begins. The battery discharge can be viewed in either graph
format (below) or as a spreadsheet as the ADC-16 collects the
data.
This note is abbreviated. The full version of this application note,
and many others can be found on our web site
www.picotech.com/applications.html
PicoLog
PicoLog is a powerful but flexible program for collecting,
analysing and displaying data. The software can be used with
our data acquisition products, virtual instruments (pages 4-9)
and our temperature and humidity converters (pages 16-18).
Some of the features of PicoLog are listed here. To see for
yourself just how good it is, download a copy from our web site:
www.picotech.com/download.html
Spreadsheet View
Displays text data in a format
that can be easily ‘copied and
pasted’ into other applications.
Data can also be saved to disk
in standard ASCII text format.
Graph View
Graphs can be displayed both during and
after data collection. Each channel can
be displayed in its own graph or multiple
channels can be displayed in the same
graph. Axes can be setup manually,
automatically or in chart recorder mode.
Multipliers allow you to magnify areas of
interest. Graphs can be ‘copied’ into the
clipboard and then ‘pasted’ into reports.
Player View
Displays previously recorded
data. It enables you to scroll
quickly through stored files to
compare results on successive
runs. The player can be used to
examine old data whilst new data
is still being recorded.
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Collect up to 1 million samples
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Supports all Pico ADCs
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Easy and intuitive to use
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Free upgrades and technical support
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Windows (3.x,95/98/ME,NT/2000) versions
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International language versions
Useful Features
Parameter Scaling
can be used to convert raw data into standard
engineering units. A wide range of equation and table lookup scaling
options are provided.
Additional parameters
can be
calculated, for example to calculate
power output from a boiler you may
need to multiply a flow reading from
one channel with the temperature
difference between two further
channels.
Alarm Limits
can be set for each
channel to alert the user should a
parameter go out of a specified
range.
IP Networking
enables remote data
collection from Pico’s full range of
data aquisition products.
Acquisition
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