Looking for a serial logger...

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Frequently-Asked Questions
#1

Hi!

For a current project (weather station) I need to log the data string of my board.
I have an old Windows 98 PC with 64Mb RAM I would like to use.
The simpler would have been to use Linux, but I’m not sure about compatibility and the ability to run a simple server with 64Mb RAM… :-/
Anyway, my first thought was to build a simple Java app using Processing. But, only Java 1.4 seems to run on it… so it doesn’t look great.
I tried many WAMPs and… dll problems on W98.

So I’m now looking into another way to log my data (ideally to a Mysql or a XML file) in order to share it over the network and have a Processing app displaying the data on other computers.

I found a simple freeware logger but it doesn’t record the date. I basically only need to log the last incoming string every minute, but definately with the date.

Any idea?

thanks!

#2

64MB will be no problem. You can even run an up-to-date linux system with X11 on 64MB (if you have swap enabled) :wink:

Text mode should be no problem at all. What may be a problem are the memory hungry graphical installation routines that some distros use.

Then just run perl/python or whatever and store the data to a database or file or…

#3

Try http://tinycorelinux.com/ for a extremely small footprint linux.

In http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1211215328/ reply 67, I provided a simple python routine to cature data to a file from the Arduino Playground datetime library example via a serial link.

#4

Hm… if it’s possible, I’ll choose linux!
I’ll have a look at the compatibility :wink: and the available space… it’s a very tiny hard drive, compared to our actual standards! I’m not sure about a dual boot.

Thanks for the suggestions, otherwise a python script on windows could do the trick, I didn’t actually think about the fact that python can run on windows :smiley:
[edit]Python only for Windows 2000+, but DOS should also be ok for a script.[/edit]

#5

Definitely wouldn’t use win98.

My windows experience started with win98, and ended with win98.

64MB is massive in Linux land :slight_smile:

#6

:wink:
I’m currently trying to install Fluxbuntu!

#7