hi I'm drew Kleber with Mitutoyo America corporation I'm here at Jeremy banks
Jeremy is our national data management Sales Specialist today we're doing a
little MeasurLink Q&A session so Jeremy one of the questions I get
frequently from customers is in regards to DAQ sources different kinds that are
available wired Wireless grabbing data from other stations even at the point of
what does DAQ stand for well drew that's a great question when it comes to
DAQ sources it basically breaks down into a few different types there's
gonna be USB serial text and dde okay okay so to start out simply let's
take a look at this USB input tool okay to this digital caliper so this is all
one piece so you go directly from the tool there's no interface box required
for this no it's it's a one piece cable it's digit connection on one end and
it's USB on the other so you just plug it into your gauge making sure that you
pick the right port type and then you plug this into a USB port on your
computer okay so what about drivers any special software or anything
nope it's plug-and-play just plug it right in your raid would collect data oh
great now as far as measure link is concerned this is a USB interface so all
we do is pick that into device settings and I can show you in the software a
little bit later okay that'd be great and all you do is plug it in and collect
data very good what if a customer has multiple data sources this seems like it
would be great for a single tool like we have here maybe two or three tools and
but if I have eight or ten tools that might run out of USB ports pretty quick
right right so if you're just doing one or two this is a great device but if
you're doing multiple inputs then we have a multiplexer okay so multiplexer
is simply a multiple input device so we same connection digimatic but on the
other end we're going to use a 10 pin connection to our multiplexer okay so
the cable is actually a little different then it plugs into the gauge is still
the same correct right but I'm noticing this is not the USB connection like the
other cable right this is a D type cable and actually if you look this is
not a connection that you're gonna see on a regular computer yes so what you do
is you plug this into your multiplexer and then on the other end of the MiG is
a standard serial port the other end of the serial port is going to plug into
your computer okay gotcha an older larger stand-alone computers you're
going to have an RS 232 port on this end it's 25 pin on the computer side
it's 9 pin now on your newer computers they're not going to have a serial port
so we have a 25 pin - 9 pin adapter that's going to be usb on the other end
now is this any proprietary information on that or can you teach measure link to
pull data from this or any other rs-232 device so we could use any third party
device it can be an older-style device that only has serial output or it could
be a modern device that you want to use the serial commands maybe you want
bi-directional communication so you want to use a serial connection
gotcha now inside of the measure link software it's a little more complicated
you're not just going to say that it's a USB gauge sending data you're actually
going to set what the parity the baud rate all of those serial settings inside
of our software which I'll show you in a couple minutes and you're also going to
set the string that the data format is going to be in and this could be
different for a variety of gauges understood so there's a utility in the
measuring software that allows you to set all this oh great
yes so all you really need is a manual and an example data string and you're in
business okay so if I have a granite setup like this and multiple gauges I
could go into a a Meg box such as this what if though what if I have several
gauges and I'm concerned about cables getting intertwined and and things of
that nature right right so of course what the multiplexer everything is going
to be wired now we do have the the minute I owe you a system okay
the minutes how you wave system it's three main components it's a receiver
it's a transmitter and then a little pigtail cable that connects to the gauge
now it's the same port that all of the other connection types were using so I
could use with this gauge a USB input to direct or a multiplexer with an SPC
cable or I could use the you wave the connection is all the same how many
transmitters can i hook up to a single receiver well this one receiver will
support 100 transmitters and Windows will support 16 receivers so really yes
so you can actually have a system with 1600 devices
in use at once Wow yeah most people don't normally do that they'll keep it
down to about 10 or 15 gauges in the system but you have the ability to
expand if you need to very good so this is all great if we're pulling data from
actual physical measuring tools right here I have a micrometer here an
indicator here a caliper but not not every tool in the lab it has a digimatic
output port or maybe has a number on it maybe it's coming from another software
maybe it's a CMM software or vision software do we still have the ability to
pull that data in to measure links all the data is in one place absolutely
absolutely if it's a minute on your product if it's a standard meditative
software and we can use a dde connection and a DD connection is a direct
connection from the in cosmos the QV packed for trace pack software directly
to measurably so they automatically handshake together absolutely it takes
minimal setup wonderful basically you just say I'm sending data to measure
link on this tolerance and you're off and running okay now what if somebody's
made a bad decision it has a nominal same effort unfortunately that happens
sometimes people are using devices that we don't make like tensile testers or
something like that or maybe digital scales or spectrometer so most measuring
devices have a way to digitally output the data so now I'll put a text file or
an output file an ASCII file this file will have the data in a repeatable
format so we have a function called import templates and what we can do is
set up a template inside of the mesh like software that would then parse the
data coming through the text file so every time the data is output from the
gauge we import it in the measure link so how does that work since no two
machines will output the same format of file well there's a utility inside a
measure link that allows us to build the import template okay so and you can
build as many templates as you need generally speaking though a certain
software will output the same every time you may have more features or a
different part number but the format's the same so your tensile tester can
output all the same format even if you have a hundred different part numbers
but your digital scale might output a different format but it's going to be
the same for all 100 part numbers so you'd build two templates one for the
tester one for the scale perfect
well Jeremy thank you for your time this has been a great overview of all these
individual products if I want to learn more on specific ways of pulling data in
what can I do well in the future we're gonna make these tooltip videos and
we're gonna share these out on YouTube great and well you know any other video
service and I'm going to make individual tooltip videos for collecting data from
USB devices from serial devices and from virtual conference great so anyway that
wants to know more can just go to youtube and search up the Mitutoyo America
Channel and find it from there absolutely very good well thank you for
your time today I sure do appreciate it and thank you for your time if you have
any other questions please feel free to find more videos on our youtube channel
or visit us online at www.mitutoyo.com