PLX-DAQ version 2 - now with 64 bit support! (and further new features)

Hey guys.

I have a question to the PLX-DAQ Version 2

is there the possibility to transfer a decimal number to the Arduino program? just like 4.3 or so?

Currently I'm using the commands

  Serial.println("CELL,GET,FROMSHEET,Simple Data,G,5");   dac1_voltage = (float) Serial.readStringUntil(10).toFloat();

It seems tha PLX only sends the rounded number 4 instead of 4.3
I already have changed the decimal seperater to "." in Excel, but still.

Dhanraj_Gupta:
I am unable to download the new version. Every time the link is taking me to the same page after clicking.

Hi Dhanraj: this is more an forum issue. Have you tried rightclick and "Save as"?

Wosche:
is there the possibility to transfer a decimal number to the Arduino program? just like 4.3 or so?

Hi Wosche: I remember having the same issue. At least in the Beginners Guide I gave a recommendation to send Strings and Integers only. But I think I said that because sending Floats is just a bit tricky. What is your DirectDebugWindow showing? There should be a line for send information as well.
Changing the decimal delimiter to a point should help, otherwise the question is whether or not your dac1_voltage variable is declared as float?
In the end you could just increase the number by 10 (depends on your places after the decimal delimiter), thus send full integers, and divide by that in Arduino.... ugly but should work....

Hi NetDevil Yeah my debug window shows that for example "4,3" is sent. And this is the Problem, because than it interprets it as two separated things.

My solution to this issues on the Arduino side was, that I just save the sent data into a String, make a for-loop iterating over all of the fieldelements and than compare and replace the "," with "." and save it in a float afterwards. :slight_smile:

Maybe you have an more elegant solution to this, that doesn't need that much processing time, escpacially when someone has a lot of variables to transfer :slight_smile:

But another question came to my mind. At the moment I'm just reading out a couple of cells in excel to the Arduino program. Is there a possibilty to read out TextBoxes of an Excel GUI for example?
I would have an ugly solution for this, So that that what I write into the GUI textboxes is written into cells, and the PLX-DAQ takes it from there, but is there a more direct solution for this?

And thanks a lot!

Hello,

Just wanted to ask if PLX-DAQ v2.11 is supported on Mac. I don't have a mac but the code I am working on is probably tested on a macbook.

Thank a lot for good work!

Hey,

I just tried to run DefaultSketch.ino on MKR1000 with Arduino IDE version 1.8.4, but every time I try to Connect and start logging, the UI kind of crashes and the excel shut down. It restarts and recovers the PLX-DAQ xlms file. I am on Windows 10, 64bits.

Will be very thankful if you have any idea.

Edit: I am using Office 365 ProPlus, so may be this is the reason. Can I install an older office and keep my own at the same time if Office 365 is not supported with PLX-DAQ?

Best regards,
Mona

Hi net^devil,
thank you so much four your Excel-File. I just startet in electronics and programming my arduino. I was not happy with the serial monitor and plotter - now I should be able to work with my output data in Excel.

My question. Is it okay for you, if I publish some tutorials of your software at YouTube? I've got a German Excel YouTube-Channel Andreas Thehos - YouTube and would like to demonstrate PLX-DAQ.

Thanks a lot
Andreas

Duh, a lot to reply on :slight_smile: let's give it a try!


@Wosche:

Wosche:
Yeah my debug window shows that for example "4,3" is sent. And this is the Problem, because than it interprets it as two separated things. (...) Maybe you have an more elegant solution to this, that doesn't need that much processing time

That shouldn't be the case. If it sends the string with a comma already you need to work on your delimiter in Excel. Maybe try using '=4.3 (make sure of the apostrophe) or format the cell as text and type 4.3. Since I don't have direct access to my Arduino dev IDE at the moment all I can say is that I once managed to make it send a point-separated float to the Arduino. It is possible :slight_smile:

Wosche:
Is there a possibilty to read out TextBoxes of an Excel GUI for example?
I would have an ugly solution for this, So that that what I write into the GUI textboxes is written into cells, and the PLX-DAQ takes it from there, but is there a more direct solution for this?
And thanks a lot!

No, there is currently no possibility. A maybe lightly less ugly workaround is to label the checkboxes and tick them to switch between values. Of course you can only story 4 values by that and your Arduino needs to know which box is what and interpret the checked/unchecked values (1/0) to the numbers again. Is ugly as well....
In case you are familiar with VBA (isn't that hard) you can adjust the code (insert a textbox, create a new command "GETCONTENTFROMTEXTBOX" and instead of reading the cell value read the text box value).
And: you're welcome :slight_smile:


@Mona:

monamomeni:
Just wanted to ask if PLX-DAQ v2.11 is supported on Mac. I don't have a mac but the code I am working on is probably tested on a macbook.

Neither do I, sorry :-/ just give it a try but I reckon since there is a lot of API calls it might fail. I guess a similar question has been asked in this thread as well once before :confused:

monamomeni:
I just tried to run DefaultSketch.ino on MKR1000 with Arduino IDE version 1.8.4, but every time I try to Connect and start logging, the UI kind of crashes and the excel shut down. It restarts and recovers the PLX-DAQ xlms file.
Edit: I am using Office 365 ProPlus, so may be this is the reason. Can I install an older office and keep my own at the same time if Office 365 is not supported with PLX-DAQ?

Office 365 is the web version, isn't it? That will surely have trouble to connect to all the APIs used.
Not sure about having to versions installed at the same time. It might work that they can start and run, but I don't know if they might have problems with updating / overriding system files they both use.
What I did (in the beginning to find out why PLX DAQ v1 wasn't running on specific Windows / Office versions) was to use Virtual PC software and install another version of Office in there. It is quite unhandy but at least it works even with Arduino


@Andreas:

atExcel:
Hi net^devil,
thank you so much four your Excel-File. I just startet in electronics and programming my arduino. I was not happy with the serial monitor and plotter - now I should be able to work with my output data in Excel.

Funny thing, that is exactly where I started from as well :slight_smile: I just wanted a way better way to visualize my data.

atExcel:
My question. Is it okay for you, if I publish some tutorials of your software at YouTube? I've got a German Excel YouTube-Channel www.youtube.com/athehos and would like to demonstrate PLX-DAQ.

Well, since I am German as well let me put it like this: na siggi ! ("sure do")
As mentioned in the code PLX DAQ v2 is widely inspired by v1 and I do not hold any rights on the code or rather do not want to hold any rights. Use it as you like, mod it as you like, spend me a beer if we meet one time and you like (you sure might have a higher chance meeting me since we are both from Germany :wink: ). It will be my pleasure to have a wider audience get in touch with the software and it might increase my motivation to finally get to work on v3 (alternative main code with hopefully much more stability).


Greetings to all of you!

Hi net^devil,

na siggi ! ("sure do")

this is how it should be done!

  1. the YouTube-Tutorial
  2. the beer :wink:

You can find my contact information on my channel.
Glück Auf!
Andreas

hi,

I am trying to extract my data from arduino (i have both nano and uno) wirelessly and wish to plot the data on a graph.

I make use of the wifi module esp 8266 and follow the procedure from this link

to make a wifi cloud connector and i will be using cloudino.io cloud server to program my arduino wirelessly.

Is it possible to use plx daq to obtain data from the arduino from my sensor as i will not be connecting my arudino to any usb port ?

If so , can i trouble you to advise me on what kind of modifications which need to be done to implement this idea.

Thanks for your time in advance.

joseph_1234:
Is it possible to use plx daq to obtain data from the arduino from my sensor [wifi esp 8266] as i will not be connecting my arudino to any usb port ?
If so , can i trouble you to advise me on what kind of modifications which need to be done to implement this idea.

Hi joseph,

first of all => sadly PLX DAQ does not work with wifi modules like esp 8266. The communication is build on USB comm port communication only.

PLX DAQ could be modded to receive data not from "that one connection" but rather from a generalized module. This module could then be extended to receive data from USB or Network. For network a separate listener would be needed (thus e.g., a server side component to listen within your wifi). It will be some kind of larger design of an architecture.

Actually this is what I wanted to develop in the first place - but I never got my freaking ESP 8266 modules to work properly !!! The voltage converter to 3V (I guess) always resulted in garbage being send between my Arduino and the ESP 8266 ...
The USB communication is kind of problematic for PLX DAQ and I would like think about switching to ethernet communication. Although I don't have any time at the moment to do that ...

NetDevil:
Hi joseph,

first of all => sadly PLX DAQ does not work with wifi modules like esp 8266. The communication is build on USB comm port communication only.

Hi,
thanks for your reply,
no worries , i will try something else :slight_smile:

Hey NetDevil,

Sorry if this has already been asked/answered, I couldn't find it anywhere.

Is it possible to use PLX-DAQ in combination with a APC220? I'm able to print and read the prints using a serial monitor program, but PLX-DAQ doesn't see anything. It recognises that the COM port is in use and able to connect, but nothing in the spreadsheet or raw data logger.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

joshjoshjosh123:
Is it possible to use PLX-DAQ in combination with a APC220? I'm able to print and read the prints using a serial monitor program, but PLX-DAQ doesn't see anything. It recognises that the COM port is in use and able to connect, but nothing in the spreadsheet or raw data logger.

Hi Josh,

basically PLX DAQ is compatible with all kinds of hardware, as long as the data can be send via the Serial Monitor. Please check out the Beginners Guide included in the downloads to get to know the syntax.

In case there really is nothing shown in the DirectDebugWindow I guess it will most likely be a wrong baud rate? Please make sure baud rate in PLX DAQ is the same as in your Arduino code.

Hello,
I have multiple systems that log data one time when system is turned on.
My problem is that each time it store data on first column. Is there any way i can store each data in different column??

Thanks in advance.

ankit643:
Is there any way i can store each data in different column??

Hi,
might be that CELL,SET command can be used to solve your problem.
Please take a look at the beginners guide for instructions.

Greetings
Jonathan

Thanks

I tried Cell Set feature it stores data in first row,

I want to know how can we find number of rows in which data is already stored so that when next time I reconnect my module it stores data after that.

I will row set that number

ankit643:
I want to know how can we find number of rows in which data is already stored so that when next time I reconnect my module it stores data after that.

Hi,
there currently is no function for that. You could uncheck the box "Restart Arduino on connection" (or something like that) to keep your counter, but it only works in case your Arduino has not been rebooted otherwise (e.g., power cut).

Another way is to implement a new function like "GETMAXROWS", similar to "CELL,GET" syntax. Since you are already developing code you will be capable of this - VBA is not that hard and there is plenty of code to cop from. You can access PLX DAQ code by pressing ALT+F8.
To get max rows use code like this: ActiveSheet.Cells(ActiveSheet.Rows.count, 1).End(xlUp).Row

Mr NetDevil!

Thank you for the tool you've made!

I'm interested in device that will send data to excel spreadsheet. It will measure the distance during the device movement and those measurements should be transfered to excel spreadsheet on-the-fly (because arduino doesn't have enough internal RAM, or writing to SD card is probably too slow). Each measurement will be 8 bit signed value as i plan to send the distance difference (increment) only (so it will be positive or negative number) instead of absolute distance.
The measurement will be taken up to 5000 times a second so every 0,2 usec. Is it possible to send data via serial connection via PLX-DAQ at that speed - 1 byte per 0.2 micro second? It is 5k Bytes a second. Probably the serial connection should be 57 600 kbps or higher, right?

Next thing: after the data is loaded to excel i will process it and then i want the processed data to be sent back to arduino over serial.
But this time the device will replicate the measured profile at much slower speed. As arduino doesn't have much memory for the buffer to receive all the data from serial is it possible to monitor if the arduino buffer is full and to stop data transfer over serial until arduino have a room for the next data.

Is it possible to make arduino to initiate the data transfer from excel when it is ready to replicate the profile?

Or maybe esp8266 for that?;/

I'm using Excel 2019 with v2.11. I can view the data from the Arduino pro-micro in the "display direct debug" box in Excel, but nothing will display in the Excel spreadsheet cells. I'm using a very simple sketch as the example provided with 2.11 locks up Excel 2019. If I click "Clear Columns" it will clear the columns. The controller message just says "timer reset" after connecting. Any suggestions?