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Forum Index : Electronics : Piclog over the net.
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Its out. Bound to be a few bugs and issues that need to be sorted, please let me know about them. Dont try to break it, or expect it to do anything its not designed to do. By that I means its designed to work with a original or updated PicLog, or Pete's Power Loggers, not other hardware. Its not as well documented as I would like, and the graphing side of things is very basic at this stage, but I was keen to get it released. Its on page 4 of the PicLog article, but not linked to from page 3 yet, only linked to from here. http://www.thebackshed.com/windmill/piclog4.asp Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| windman1000 Regular Member  Joined: 21/06/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 91 |
Good Job Glenn As You can see on the online charts my calibration was a little off ( 2261.6rpm , 127.5mph , 8571.69Watts)LOL My Old RPM settings With The VB Piclog Was 102.8 pulses on a encoder And My Wind Speed Was 50 pulses on a encoder Use 60 / ( number of magnets in the alternator / 2 ) Now I Took 102/60/2 To Get .85 And It looks Close But Not Sure Its Right. Per wind speed unit, I Took 50/2 then added a 0.0 to get 0.025 And It looks Close But Not Sure Its Right. Do you have a better way to convert old rpm and windspeed Calibrations To New Piclog 2.0 Calibration? No Errors In Startup And Seems To Be Logging Just Fine To Your Site And Mine. WINDMAN |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Hi Windman. If you have 102.8 pulses from a decoder on your windmill shaft, use 60/102.8 = .583 As most set ups will be counting the AC power pulses instead of a decoder, the 60/(magnets/2) rule would work. Also note magnets/60/2 is not the same as 60/(magnets/2). My windspeed anometer is a encoder, I only see pulses and not AC, so I dont need to divide by 2. The old PicLog divider for wind speed was 2.2, and I applied 1/2.2 to get .4545, and that seams to be working spot on for me. In your case 1/50 = .02, try that and see how it goes. Good to hear its working OK. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| windman1000 Regular Member Joined: 21/06/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 91 |
Thanks Glenn Yes Thows Numbers Seem Alot Better, so i follow your lead and check my amp, it was 17.8 on old vb piclog 1.3, and i was guessing at .050 on new 2.0 piclogger so i did 1/17.8=.056 so i changed it from .050 to .056 and now everything looks like it did before. when i get more wind il double check amps to amp meter, and i will dig out the same encoder that im using for the rpm and check it with lathe(Known RPMs), but over all it is really close now. WINDMAN |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
I've released a update to the graphing side of PicLog. PicGraph 1.0.b has a few updates including..... 1. Moving mouse over graph displays volts, amps, etc, values at that time. 2. Left click on graph to zoom in to that part of the graph. 3. Right click to zoom out. Next I'll add some grid lines to the graph, add Excel and csv file export, and clean up the layout a bit. You can download the tkn file below, just copy it to your PicLog directory, overwriting the exisitng PicGraph.tkn file. The source code is included. Glenn 2010-09-12_142659_PicGraph_1-0-b.zip The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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niall1 Senior Member  Joined: 20/11/2008 Location: IrelandPosts: 331 |
hi Windman you mentioned earlier using a usb connection on your piclog...will a conventional adapter work ? ..or what driver change might be needed ? reason i,m asking is i wanted to run a new laptop running vista this week on the logger but it dosent have a serial port...when i tried to boot the pic software or Gordons an error of missing a mscomm32.oxc file immediately came up....i was expecting a "no signal" error to come up on the pic ...its done this before on xp when the serial cable was unplugged ...but not the missing mscomm32 file niall |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Hi Naill The new Piclog 2 shouldn't need mscomm32.ocx, are you using the new Piclog or a older version. To get Gordons software running, you need to get a copy of mscomm32.ocx onto the new laptop. Do a search for the mscomm32.ocx file on the old PC, and copy it to the piclog directory or the windows/system32 directory. Let us know how you go. I'm using the new Piclog 2.0 on a USB to serial converter without any problems, where the old PicLog ( 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 ) had a few issues. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| niall1 Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2008 Location: IrelandPosts: 331 |
hi Glenn i,ll recheck and try a usb converter cable on the vista laptop over the next few days ...logs have been very stable on xp over a 4 day period ..just one error and i suspect thats due to wiring housekeeping niall |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Today I received a email from Herb in Texas. Herb is a fellow hobbiest and sends me a email occasionally to keep me up to date with what he's been up to. He has a web site at http://herbandbarbara.com/index.htm, with lots of his projects. Herb's been working on his own logger software based on the Arduino microchip development board. His software is written in Visual Basic 2008, and open source. So if you want to look at a Arduino based system, and learn a little VB2008, then visit Herbs page at http://herbandbarbara.com/index_files/Page1199.htm. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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vasi Guru  Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Thanks Glenn, I'm interested on anything related to Arduino. Vasi Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Yeah I thought your would like that Vasi. Well I'm pretty happy with the stability of the new PicLog, it seams to be rock solid. I've had one going for weeks without a single glitch so far. I've got a lot on my plate at the moment, with a house sale and all, but once things get back to normal I'll do some more work on the PicGraph and especially the online graphing. I've really just scratched the surface of what I want to do for the online graphing, lots of potential it has 
Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| Janne Senior Member Joined: 20/06/2008 Location: FinlandPosts: 121 |
Hi, I just finished my own version of the datalogger, a couple of pictures of it are below. It's doesn't differ too much from Glenn's board, just some things are routed to different picaxe inputs but the principles are the same. And instead of using a normal current shunt, I'm just going to use the negative cable from the rectifiers to get current data. 
I was thinking of using the piclog2 to do the logging. It basically has everything I need in one package, bells and whistles included :) One question though.. As the piclog by default saves data to log every 10 secs, but the default picaxe hardware sends data every 2 secs or so. Is it so that the logger software will average those recordings received during the logging cycle, and then save them to the logfile? If not, I was thinking of adding some sort of averaging to the picaxe firmware, and to do more measurements over the 10 sec perioid. I also have sourced an old IBM A30 laptop as a cheap logger computer.. I'm running it off from the 12V battery bank, with the help of this; http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5530 It seems quite a lot more power efficient way to run the laptop, than using a separate inverter to power the normal brick psu. If at first you don't succeed, try again. My projects |
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| niall1 Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2008 Location: IrelandPosts: 331 |
very neat work there Janne .... sorry for coming in after you post
just a small bit about reading rpm on the original pic circuit... when i set up the rpm function i noticed a kind of tail or phantom rpm reading on the graphs.. putting a 100n cap across the led in the opto coupler seems to have cured this although i not sure how this works ..but with the cap added and a test led in the optos place the pulse seemed more defined spikes generated by the rectifier have been mentioned before ...now i can see where a cro might be usefull...i,ve read where others have monitored distortion , noise ? in rectifiers my God ...circuit risers on the pcb... niall |
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Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Very nice work Janne. 
How was the board etched, Positive resist? Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Hi Janne Yeah nice work. Niall's suggestion to ad a smal cap across the optocoupler input is a good one. The PicAxe is quick enough to pick up the rectifier "hash' at cut in speeds, a small filter capacitor can help smooth them out. Yes the PicLog2 does average out the readings over the log interval. The more readings per log interval the better as a rule, but it does mean small spikes in power from gusts of wind will be averaged out. The standard PicLog circuit will send data every 2 to 3 seconds, so a 10 second log interval means its averaged 3 to 4 readings, which is good enough for every day use. The PicLog2 will read a faster modified PicLog circuit too, I've tested it to 30 data readings per second, and it sucessfully processed every chunk of data and averaged it out correctly. PicLog2 uses a 1 second timer as its main trigger event, meaning it will process everything once a second. It will read in and process 30 odd records in that second second, but if you wanted to have it log the data to file any faster than once per second, you would need to change the 1 second timer to a smaller value. This will work, but that one second timer is also used for a few other house keeping functions, so its not recomended. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| Janne Senior Member Joined: 20/06/2008 Location: FinlandPosts: 121 |
Thanks for the replies. It's nice the piclog does averaging as well, reducing the overhead the picaxe has to do. The 100n cap sounds like a good idea, and easy to add too now as it's still on my work bench. Thanks. I've used the same hardware before to read RPM on my MPPT board, but in that version the RPM is read by calculating the time between zero crossings using interrupt, so the slow polled interrupt of the picaxe system automatically filters out any ringing from the rectifiers. But with the count command the input should pick up almost all noise, so some filtering is indeed in order. I made the pcb at work, using the positive resist method.. Nothing hi-tech in there, just an UV box and a couple of jars with chemicals, but it's good enough for me to ocassionally borrow on hobby projects :). The name of the board and maker got kinda faded away, I think I forgot the board in the sodium hydroxide(developer) for a tad too long. One good reason to include some text is to know that you have not accidentally put the exposing film in there mirrored... happened to me a couple of times too often in the past. Nowdays I prefer to use SMD components where possible, as drilling the holes with the manual drill machine is a real pita. I also discovered a problem with my plan of using the cigarette ligter adapter(the link mentioned in my previous post).. As the adapter lacks ground isolation, it's not possible to have the logger board anymore at the "lower" potential, the shunt would effectively be shorted via the serial port ground wire on the computer. So I'm going to have to plug in the inverter, with the normal brick psu to get isolation for the computer power supply. Good thing this dawned on me before letting the smoke out from the serial port! edit: it seems like it's no longer possible to edit my old post.. If possible it would be nice if some of the moderators would add a note to the end of the post warning about using that lighter adapter, because of the lacked isolation. If at first you don't succeed, try again. My projects |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Hi Janne, I like your board too. That PCB is high quality. 
Vasi Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| Janne Senior Member Joined: 20/06/2008 Location: FinlandPosts: 121 |
After mulling over the problem a bit, I think with this version i can circumvent the ground problem by isolating the serial interface from the logger board. To do this, I'll just grind off the ground connections from the serial connector, and use an optocoupler to drive the serial line. Pull-up voltage can be stolen from pin 4 on the serial port. A dirty solution, but should work. Generally, I think a high side shunt would make life easier, as it would remove the confusing setup with multiple ground levels. If at first you don't succeed, try again. My projects |
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| Janne Senior Member Joined: 20/06/2008 Location: FinlandPosts: 121 |
I did the mod I described in the previous post, so much for the mr. nice board, but hey, at least it now works :) 
If at first you don't succeed, try again. My projects |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5036 |
Hi Janne Yeah its ugly, but its also very clever. Are you using a negative rail regulator, like a 7905, to give a -5 volts with respect to the 12v, and using that as the PicAxe's ground connection? Using a positive side shunt resistor is a big plus, well done. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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