Nuts and Volts - November 2014

the LED should be red. Watch the clock, and when it reaches the proper minute, press switch 1 and release. The LED should flash green, indicating the micro’s clock has been set to the time you programmed on the SD card.

Press the switch; the LED should flash red and go dark, indicating that it is collecting data. I turned the LED off to save battery power. To stop recording, press the switch again. The LED should turn red. Turn the power switch off and remove the SD card. The g ranges can be changed to 2 g, 4 g, 8 g, or 16 g using the spreadsheet. Note: When the unit is used for continuous monitoring, the SRAM card becomes a power hog pulling 25 mA constantly, whereas the seismic mode or tripping mode only pulls 1 mA.

Tripping Monitor

In the Excel file, type in an x next to Tripping Monitor. You’ll need to type in the trip point you want the unit to start recording at. This can be 0 .1-15 g. Follow the instructions for loading the Notebook file in the spreadsheet.

Load the card and turn on the unit. The LED should be red. Watch the clock, and when it reaches the proper minute, press the pushbutton switch and release. The LED should flash green, indicating the micro’s clock has been set to the time you programmed on the SD card.

Once you have decided where you are going to place the shipping monitor, you can activate it by pushing the button. The LED will turn on steady red for one minute. This will allow you to put the lens on and secure it with the knurled nuts. When the red LED goes out, it indicates that it is armed.

When the unit is dropped, jarred, or thrown, and exceeds its trip point, it will record for five seconds (this can be changed) when an event happens. The data will then be written to the SD card. Once the unit has made a measurement, the LED will flash red about every four seconds indicating the trip point has been exceeded. NOTE: Only one mode can be used at a time.

Viewing the Data

Using Excel for Downloading Data

Excel can be used for short runs, but can only hold 1,048,576 readings and will only graph 32K. The Dataq Waveform can hold a lot more. However, the Excel is easy for reading one minute seismic data.

1. Open Excel.

2. Click on the Office Button (very upper left corner) and then Open.

3. Change the All Excel Files to All Files in the bottom right corner.

4. Locate the SD card and click on one of the Accelx.txt files.

5. Make sure the Delimited box is checked, then click Finish.

6. The file will load.

7. Put the cursor on A8 and hold down the shift and Ctrl; use the down arrow and it will highlight column A. Press the right arrow button and it will highlight all the cells. You don’t have to use the whole file.