Updated Data Acquisition Software

New Windmill software collects data from laboratory instruments over TCP/IP, RS232, RS422, RS485 and Modbus. Windmill runs under Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows. The software is available for just £50 and subscribers to Windmill's Monitor newsletter can download a free trial. The company offers free technical support for life. The data is stored in text files, and can be passed to other software packages, like Excel and Matlab, for analysis.

Users can connect up to 10 instruments to the PC over, for example, Internet, Ethernet and RS232. Data can be in ASCII, binary or hexadecimal format. The Windmill software suite includes extremely easy to use logging, charting and control software applications: no programming is required. With a flexible approach to building command strings, and parsing the received messages to extract data values, the majority of instruments are supported. Many data logging options are available, for example: log only when a button is pressed on an instrument; log to a new data file at regular intervals; log data only when channels are in an alarm state; log data for a pre-set duration; log data continually.

All logged data is time stamped. Instruments that can be interfaced with Windmill include balances, fluorometers, GPS receivers, oxygen electrodes, particle analysers and pH meters.