Hello and welcome, my name is Schuyler Smith
and I do Technical Sales and Support
here at Apogee Instruments and we're
here talking about our frequently asked
questions and put it into a video. We're
going to talk about meter operations for
"M" models from Apogee instruments. So
today's video is going to include
information for the following:
the MQ-100, 200, 300, and 500 series, the MU-200, the MP-100 and 200,
the MI-200, and MO-200. And, what we're
going to go over is what it looks like
in sample mode, how to move it from sample mode to
log mode and in log mode all of the
information that we are collecting, and
then the AC-100 software including connection and
just a quick analysis using that. So in
sample mode
(that's just a picture of the MQ-200
over there) but in sample mode we press the
sample button to record up to 99 manual
measurements. So in a greenhouse type
application you could push the sample
button if you were in a certain location
and you wanted to sample their, however
it does not record any time stamp when
you hit SMPL so you would probably
want a notepad next you to say sample
one taken at certain time in certain
location if you were doing that type of
application, and then log mode. Now I 'm
going to do a demo of how to do all this
and log mode I just wanted to put it up
here because this is a video in case you
wanted to pause it and refer back to this
later.
So let's go ahead and do our hands on demo,
just give me a second to pull it up here,
alright so here we go. We have our MQ-500 for
demo right now go ahead and turn it on
and we'll go ahead what we're looking at
here is we see "SMPL" right here means
we're in sample mode. The 8 in this
example with our MQ-500 is showing us
there's 8 micro moles per meter squared per second
coming in from theses lights and
then the 17 up here in the corner is
showing us that there are currently 17
samples saved on here. If we want to
review any of those samples we just push
the down button and then it goes through
and we see that number of top changing
as we go through all the various samples
saved on here.
If we want to get out of scroll
we just hit the SMPL button and then
we're back to the menu. To get to log
mode we hit the MODE button and then we
see sample blinking we push down, push MODE again, and then MODE again.
Now what is telling us is it in log mode, again our
light reading the same and it's telling
us that there are currently 99 saved 30-minute averages.
So it only record
those 30-minute averages and there are
already 99 on here so for all the new
ones that is logging it is erasing the
the oldest one on here. If we want to
scroll through those 30-minute averages
we just push down and it will allow us
to see each one of those averages, and so
in this example where it was placed in a
break room and recording the light from
the Sun in the break room as we continue
to scroll through will see it at 0 for night
and then come back and show us
low-light of yesterday afternoon.
That is log mode if we want to get out of
scrolling we hit SMPL, and then we can
see that we're back on log mode on those 99.
Now it takes a reading
every 30 seconds then averages those 30 second
readings into 30-minute averages and
records those, then every 48 of those
30-minute averages. It records as a
day and then it will save
those as daily light integrals or daily totals.
So for each one of the "M" models
it will save a daily total that you can
access through the software. So let's go
back and look at that.
We talked about log mode and one point I do
want to make here again is 99 sample
measurement, we talked about how you can
scroll through those; 99 log
measurements talked about you can scroll
through those; but to get the 99
daily totals you do need the AC-100
software with the AC-100 cord. The reason
you need the AC-100 cord is because the
meter outputs using UART protocol and it
requires that AC-100 to convert it from
UART to USB so a regular USB cord will
not allow you to get the data off of
this onto your computer.
The software comes on the USB
flash drive, but if for whatever reason
you've lost the software or you switch
computers I can show you where you can
get that off the internet i'm going to
show that in the demo here in a second,
and then we'll do a demo on connecting
the AC-100 so here we will go ahead and
pull up the website so here we are at
the homesite www.apogeeinstruments.com.
In order to get to the software lets
click over here on the support tab,
and i'm going to plug in there
is fantastic information on the support
tab so feel free to refer here if you
have any questions about anything, so
from the support tab
we're going to scroll down here
to software downloads and they're going
to scroll through till we see handheld
meter data collection software, it's a
picture of the MQ-500 but remember this
is for any of our "M" models and we'll
click right here on the Apogee AMS for
PC and when we click on that we can see it
start to download down here, this is the
the common way that windows does
downloads for all the new versions. Once
it's completely downloaded its a .exe
file. We can click on it and then it will
bring up the installshield, configuring
windows installer. So pretty standard
operation,
well hey we're just going to cancel out
of this for this example,
for mine, but of course if
you need it
go ahead and download it follow the
steps. So once we are here
we can see our Apogee AMS up here on our desktop. So here
we are a blank screen.
Let's go ahead and connect using our
AC-100 cable we'll go ahead and slide that
right in and connect and nothing happens
which is fine we have to actually
connect, and we do that by hitting open
port. I hit open port right now, it says connection
failed.
Why is that? I need to just go right here
and go to the correct COM. Well how do I
know which COM port is correct?
That's easy, I'll show you so we go right
here and on Windows 10 is very easy we
need to find the device
manager so the easiest way to find that
on Windows 10 is to click here and type
device and then device manager comes up
right there. What we're looking for
is COM port, which is right here and then we
want USB serial port. This is what we're
looking for. We just need to know what
the USB serial port was. We see it says
COM 5, and close out of that. So now we
know COM 5, we hit the arrow right
here we see COM 1, COM 5. Now let's
say that the COM we just saw on on your
device manager doesn't appear in your
drop-down, easy fix just go right there
pick whatever COM does show up put the
cursor in there
erase it and put the COM you do want.
So I want COM 5, so I put COM 5
then I hit open port now it says connected.
Now that I'm connected these buttons are
now active, I can see my sample data so it's
showing us those 17 saved sample data.
I click on 30-minute averages it will take a
second or two to load all of those and
then I'm seeing those 99, 30-minute
averages and then daily totals, so this
is what we're getting. In our example
with the MQ-500 this is all of our saved
daily light integrals. Looks like there's
about just under sixty of them on here
and showing us what are
moles per day would be in this example.
Now let's say we want to analyze the
data.
First thing is we can go to file
and we're going to save as and this will
save it as a CSV file so save as type
CSV, so right here is one that we
saved earlier, pretty self-explanatory.
But let's just say we want to do a quick
data analysis what we have here, so let's
just copy this (CTRL + C). Let's just pull
up a blank Excel spreadsheet and we'll
paste it in there and then we can see it is
that CSV format so we do need to delimit it
so let's just click down here on the
data, click up here on data, click text to
columns, need to delimit it and then we're
next we're going to do it by comma, hit
next, finish.
Alright so now, we have all that text to
columns so let's just go ahead and
highlight that row, click over here on
this nifty little tool in Excel and go
to charts, go to line. Our quick data
analysis is showing us that when we took
it up we could see the Sun was just
coming out we're getting a lot more
micro moles per meter squared per second
today then we have been the last two
days when it's been very rainy.
To conclude thank you very much for
watching our video on the basic
operations of "M" models here at
Apogee Instrument. Feel free to send us any
inquiries or questions to techsupport@apogeeinstruments.com.
Thank you.