----- Original Message ----- From: "Colin Constant" To: Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 3:05 PM Subject: Re: [EE]:Oscilloscope > Has anyone tried one of those multimeters that have a PC interface? Worth > having? I have a metek with a PC interface, and I used it a lot. Didn't like the software that came with it, so I hacked my own interface with visual basic. One time I used it to calibrate a wind veloicity meter. We hacked the wind velocity meter to a tall pole on top of my pickup truck, tossed a generator in the back, and my friend rode shotgun with a desktop PC in his lap (having no laptop) taking data from the wind sensor. I drove the rig. We got it all together about midnight one Saturday night, and rode out into the flats on a long straight road to do the calibration run. I started out driving down this highway at 5mph for a few minutes, then 10 mph for a few minutes, and so on whilst he operated the datalog program I wrote, jotting down the speeds and making sure the data was being logged. It was quite a sight, creeping along at 5mph in the night, with this crazy sensor pole sticking up 15' high out of the truck bed whizzing away, Well pretty soon some bright lights come up behind us. It was a cop. He stopped us, and asked if we were drinking, then started examining the crazy rig, the PC in the lap, and the running 120V generator on the back of the truck, all inching down the road at a fast walk, with these two guys telling this cockamamie story. He was not convinced by our excuses for a long time. When we finally talked our way out of jail, we resumed our slow test, 5mph at a time. The sensor blew up when we hit 50MPH, exploding in a flash of plastic, metal, and duct tape. It was the most fun I'd had in years. --Lawrence -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body