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I've nearly completed by weather station and want to show some of the data on my PC.
Has anyone got a Visual Basic (or anything else) program to run on a PC that can accept data via the COM port and show:
1. Wind direction and speed - ideally by some sort of historical radial plot.
2. Graphs of other readings: humidity, temperature, pressure and so on.
Previously I've used the StampPlotPro from SelmaWare but can't get a radial plot out of it.
Regards Bill Legge
I doubt you will find many apps to do that.
I have used RRDTool for graphing. RRDtool is sort of a database in itself. I made myself an anemometer based on a 16f628A which spits out data and logs to an RRD for display on my web server. Mine runs on linux/php, not Windows but you're welcome to it though.... I can't see reason you could not port the setup to windows - I belive there is an RRDTool for win32 and PHP is definately doable. Where you might get stuck is on the serial coms class i use.
VB is very easy to work with serial ports and VBExpress is free if you have to use windows.
Thanks Elnino,
I will have a loot at RRDTool - I've hot heard of it before.
I have learning VB on my 'to do' list. I get a bit confused with:
1. VB6
2. VB2006
3. Visual Baisic.Net
4. VB Express and so on...
Not sure what to focus on?
Regards Bill Legge
To add more confusion look at some of the alternatives to VB.
Dave Houston likes Pure Basic. Being that Dave uses it I will say it must be good.
I find myself using Python and Liberty Basic.
And in the long run will you want cross platform comparability ?
Pure Basic and Python are.
Just thoughts.
While Purebasic has extensive graphics capabilities (it's a favorite of game programmers) it is not as easy to create this type of graphics as it is with VB. PB requires more low-level work.
The advantage of Purebasic is that it is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, OSX) and compiles to small, efficient, standalone executables.
One thing you could do is upload the weather data to a website like weatherunderground.com. Then you can let them display the data. ;) And manage the webcode.
Hi Bill,
I am using VB Express to read data streams from COM1. The data is from a datalogger (Aqualog). I have a windows application that displays live data and enables settings to be changed on the fly. It also uses MS Access for a database. The data can then be displayed using Excel. All this is very easy to do.
And if you have MS Office it is all free when you use VB Express. I also downloaded SQL Express for free.
Wind direction sounds interesting and I will have a look into this.
Steve
EB2 - Thanks for your comments. I have had a look at VB.NET - it seemed a huge pile of code and used quite a different approach to creating the code:
1. Design the forms/windows - then automatically, create the code.
2. Glue the bits together with additional code - it's this bit that didn't seem simple/easy to me?
I recently purchasaed 'Visual Basic for Electronics Engineering Application' by Vincent Himpe - it's not the book for a beginner and I need some gentler introduction to VB to get me going.
I've had a look at Liberty Basic and like the feel of it - a more traditional approach to creating code. More work at 'low level' - but that what I've been doing for a few years with PBP.
The Liberty Basic site asks if I want the '32' or '64' bit version? I just want to run it on by PC using windows - which version do I need?
Regards Bill legge
I will guess you have a 32 bit system. I say that because if you had WIN64 you would know it :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Legge
Hi Bill
VB has a few concepts that are hard to understand, objects, methods, collections and properties to name a few. But what you want to do is realy easy in VB 2008 Express. I have time on my hands so if you want to try the VB route let me know.
Steve
Hi Steve,
I'm interested too. I strugled some weeks with MSCOMM in Excel (VB6) and it will not work with VISTA or Win 7. I got the error 8020, can not read device......
Writing data is ok.
Wil
Hi Wil
Can you give me more details please like VB code for example.
Steve
EarlyBird2/steve
Sorry to take so long to reply to your kind offer of some support if I use VB Express. I'm still not sure which way to go and don't want to waste time by switching languages - it seems to take me about a year before using a new language gets reasonably productive.
Is VB Express the same as VB 2008 Express?
And can it create professional looking screens on the PC?
As an aside - many years ago, when I was about 7 years old, my mother took me to Sc*nthorpe for a swim in the Easter Holidays - and I thought she liked me! I'm still trying to warm up.
Regards Bill Legge in sunny and warn Australia