Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

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Jon Rosenstiel
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Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

I had posted a photo of my “New toy”, (a Canberra Series35+ MCA), in the Images du Jour forum and mentioned I was open for suggestions on how to get data from its serial port into Excel.

Richard Hester answered:
>It's nice that you have a working 35+. Mine is still ill. When I have some time, I'll >probably try fixing it or one of the others that is lying about. The serial port, if it is >anything like the other Canberra MCAs, is extremely dumb. When coaxed, its simply >barfs out a whole screen's worth of data. There is a program made in the UK called >Windmill that you might be able to use to grab that data and put it into an Excel >worksheet. From that point, it's simple to make a graph. I think the basic version of >Windmill is still free, as long as you sign up for the monthly newsletter. At any rate, if >you load up a search engine with "windmill data acquisition", you should find their web >site in a hurry. I found Windmill originally by trolling around for data acquisition software
>in general. Let us know if you get it to work with the 35+. So far, I've lacked time and a >working MCA, so I can't be of any help just yet.


Richard,
I got a copy of Windmill, but I’m afraid I’m not computer savvy enough to configure it properly.

So here is what I did do:
I downloaded and installed all of the various freeware and shareware serial port utilities I could find. I played around with each and decided that a shareware program called “Advanced Serial Port Monitor” was the most painless to use.

In ASPM I configured the serial port to match my 35+, and put a check mark in the “Copy to File” box. After I’ve grabbed the data from the 35+ I open the file in Notepad and use “Replace” to remove most of the rectangular control characters from the data. (I’m guessing they’re control characters. Notepad, WordPad, Word and Excel display them as rectangles).

I then open the file in Excel, delete the page headings, (so the data is in one continuous block), and manually remove the remaining few rectangular control characters. I average the eight columns of count data, then make a channel vs. counts graph.

Not really a “one click” solution, but for my needs it’s acceptable. (It takes me around four minutes to get from raw data to a completed graph). I can live with that.

Jon Rosenstiel
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Richard Hull
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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by Richard Hull »

Four minutes ain't bad. Glad to see you at least have a solution temporary or permenant. I used to fart with the data and massage in Xcel, but gave it up for lent.

The new serial program that I had a friend write now just lets me drag and drop the file.

Good work and continued good luck.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
DaveC
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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by DaveC »

Jon - The Canberra looks to be a brother to a Norland 540 (?) that I once had at the lab. It's output was ASCII at the serial port at somehow (can't remember for certain , now) selectable speeds. The Norland would send at up to 39.4K baud, but in those days ( late 80's) we could only get acceptable error rates up to about 4800 baud. WE just collected the data into a text file, and had a little BASIC program to parse it, for proper display. We didn't use Excel then. I have used the parsed output from a Natlional Instruments DAQ card directly into Excel. It worked OK, but the new interfaces are much more user friendly.

If you can get ASCII output, you probably could use Wordpad to massage the data into Excel happy format.

Dave Cooper
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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by ijv »

If you can send me a sample of the output, I'll see if I can rough out a program that will read the serial port and dump the results to an Excel compatible file.

Ivan Vuletich
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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by kbonin »

I think someone else posted the same offer while I was reading this, but I'll extend it anyway - send me one output file and what you want that same output to look like, and I can write you a util to convert it. Lemme know whats best - I can easily deliver C++ Win32 app, or any form of Java app... (Java's easier, I've got more text parsing inboth base Java libraries and in my collections...)
Jon Rosenstiel
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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

Two offers within 30 minutes of each other! Is this forum great or what?

I've fired off a sample of the 35's output to both Ivan and Kerry.

Thanks again, guys.

Jon Rosenstiel
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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by ijv »

I have finally gotten around to posting the program I wrote for Jon to the useful files section.

He's tested it and seems to like it ;-)

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Re: Canberra 35+ MCA, data output to PC

Post by Richard Hull »

I'll attempt to test your program on my model 40 and get back.

I have found the best way to do excel stuff of Canberras is to just simply grab the data as a stream delimited with commas and save as a simple text file. EXTRANEOUS INFO and details NOT INCLUDED. can be added later.

From here just drag the text file over top of the excel icon and it opens and loads to a straight column of data ending at the last effective channel/xcel row number. Now just go to plot and you have your energy versus count graph. Takes mere seconds. Crude but easy and highly effective. The one that my friend wrote for the old 8100 takes up about 20k of memory and runs from DOS.

I have an old junk 286 machine at the MCA to grab the data and save to a floppy. I can then take it to my main desktop pentium as a tiny text file to drag and drop over the excel icon.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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