The AM Forum

I am working on a project..I need to do a strip chart recording of a DC voltage over a month period, samples taken and logged once an hour, 24 per day.

Yes, the obvious way to do it is with a real pen recorder, but how would one do this with a modern PC? Some sort of visual exportable format would be necessary. How would one record a DC level?

Fire away.

Bill

Believe it or not, Radio Shack sells a DVM you can connect to a PC via RS232 and log readings. I think the software is no great shakes though. But they are cheap ($40 on Amazon) and the software is a free DL.

http://www.amazon.com/RadioShack-Interface-46-Range-Digital-Multimeter/dp/B005MV15HY

http://www.radioshack.com/search/softwareResults.jsp?kw=22-812



A more industrial solution is to use a USB DVM module and some real logging sw.

http://www.aktakom.com/products/index.php?SECTION_ID=164&ELEMENT_ID=457


I think Fluke and some of the other DVM manufacturers sell similar except they can be used as a handheld DVM too.

Be sure whatever sw you get allows for data storage as a CSV file. Then you can import into Excel or other programs for analysis, plotting, etc.

logging software that can save as excel or comma-separated is always good for moving the data into charts or presenting it.

There is a company that makes this stuff and also records transient events.
I bet you can rent the equipment. A place I worked had a wave solder machine that lost its mind every time there was a thunder storm. It needed an isolation transformer and a local ground rod.
The sample rate needs to be high enough to catch transients ans smart enough to keep the file size under control.