I need advise on retreiving data from a digital indicator and inclinometer simultaneously. I have yet to puchase these items and my budget is large. Is there a simple data collection interface package that can retrieve data from both sensors and input directly into excel? If no then what type of microprocessor would work if needed? Is a sampling rate of 50 samples/second for 5 seconds possible? Thank you!
The data rate and total sampling time are very low, and trivial for a microprocessor based system. Once you get the data through say a com port, or a usb port as a virtual com port, or by wireless, there are numerous ways of getting data into excel. For example, typing in "using python to get serial data into excel" in google results in some hits, the first one, http://www.nerdkits.com/forum/thread/1348/ is a thread associated with using PySerial, by someone with little experience. More generally, "software to get serial data into excel", returns more hits. There will also be commercial packages available. http://www.windmill.co.uk/excel/ There are so many ways of approaching this that I was reluctant to even comment, everyone will have an opinion on the matter, it depends on what your experience is in putting together hardware and software, and how much you are prepared to do yourself or buy off the shelf, cheers, Richard
