Realtime Arduino Sensor Data Display

Hello all,

Recently I wanted to develop a real time arduino system, and now I want to take my sensor data and display it somehow whether through my PC or an lcd. I initially thought of using Labview yet it is expensive to get the real time kit ($1000) and the other versions aren't realtime mainly because windows is not a realtime system and will probably impede on my cycles. Therefore I 've come to the arduino community to see if anyone had any suggestions. Thanks a lot guys! :slight_smile:

the other versions aren't realtime mainly because windows is not a realtime system and will probably impede on my cycles

if the display is for a human to look at, then the "realtime" can be quite slow. Just make a simple application to display random numbers or an analog input value in the serial monitor, and let it run in an uncontroled loop. See if you can keep up with the blurr on the serial monitor display.

Not exactly sure what you mean by windows not being a realtime system but there is going to be some miniscule delay no matter how you display your data.

So if you want something to display 'exactly' as it happens it's never going to happen. So assuming this isn't what you want, you can go about it several ways. I am pretty sure the fastest is going to be to output to a parallel segmented or LCD display. This eliminates any serial comms and would be the fastest. However, it's kinda pointless since you couldn't actually read any data as fast as it would change it if it is changing faster than serial comms allow for. So the absolute easiest way is to use hyperterminal on your PC and send the data serially to the PC. This isn't going to be fancy but it will show you data. You could also build an app in Processing for displaying data. The next fastest is to use Serial segmented or LCD display which is more compact since it requires fewer connections. It is also arguably easier to program. Another method would be to use a graphical LCD but this would probably be the slowest method since there is a lot of overhead needed for displaying data on this type of display

Any of those methods are going to be fast enough to read. It really comes down to where you need to display the data. You could even write a program in Visual Studio using VB,C#,C++ etc that would display your data along with other functionality similar to processing.

Thanks a lot Wade you really pointed out all my options. Just to clarify, I was reading a stack exchange forum about windows not being a realtime operating system, but your post helps clarify everything. I just want to thank you for all your help. :smiley:

I think an arduino and a display will be sufficient. If you can condense your information with 20 x 4 characters, using 20 x 4 character display will be the easiest way to do it.