Program that can log from many multimeters.

[HKJ]

Yep, I see picture in "View", If you want I have picture of my device with soldered serial adapter and removed HID chip.

I have added the second picture and written a bit more in the notes.

[Gediminas]

I have added the second picture and written a bit more in the notes.

Looks good.
And yes, removed HID chip could create some confusion without explanation that it is not necessary to remove it.

[Gediminas]

Tenma 72-7715/UNI-T UT325 Thermometer testing with TC

Everything works as expected:

Tested positive temperatures up to 800 °C - no problems at all.
Change channels when running and logging - no problems.
Negative temperatures up to -100 °C - no problems.

Found one glitch in the device itself:

When temperature goes below -99.9 °C, then for few seconds device reports temperature as positive, then starts to report it as negative and woks correctly for the rest of the time.
But nobody probably needs to measure below -100 °C.

P.S. One more thing: After connecting thermometer to the PC, you need to press "SEND" button on the device to start sending data, then start TC or press "Reconnect", otherwise TC will not initialize the device.

[HKJ]

Everything works as expected:

Good to know, I will probably include it in the standard devices (I generally don't do that if it includes any DIY stuff). With your photos it is very easy to modify and use.
If anybody want to comment for/against this, please do so.

P.S. One more thing: After connecting thermometer to the PC, you need to press "SEND" button on the device to start sending data, then start TC or press "Reconnect", otherwise TC will not initialize the device.

One more comment added to the #notes 

Out of curiosity: How do you test the different temperature?
Do you have a thermocoupler simulator (I often use that) or do you use a reference/power supply with a voltage divider (Or do you use another way).

[Gediminas]

Out of curiosity: How do you test the different temperature?
Do you have a thermocoupler simulator (I often use that) or do you use a reference/power supply with a voltage divider (Or do you use another way).

I planned to use reference voltage source, but thermocouple and temperature controlled soldering iron and torch is much faster.
For negative temps same thing (iron and torch), but if you will set T1 - T2 temperature, then if one thermocouple is heated - thermometer shows negative temp, if another - positive. Oh, forgot to mention refrigerator.

Thermocouple simulator would be needed for calibration, for this testing iron and torch is perfect.

[Gediminas]

Thermocouple simulator would be needed for calibration, for this testing iron and torch is perfect.

By the way, this termometer can be calibrated by user. Or you can set offset to thermocouple1 and2 separately.

[HKJ]

I planned to use reference voltage source, but thermocouple and temperature controlled soldering iron and torch is much faster.
For negative temps same thing (iron and torch), but if you will set T1 - T2 temperature, then if one thermocouple is heated - thermometer shows negative temp, if another - positive. Oh, forgot to mention refrigerator.

Thermocouple simulator would be needed for calibration, for this testing iron and torch is perfect.

You hit about 400 degrees in your chart, that is not from a solder iron (Or you mistreat your iron  ), but a flame makes sense.

If you work a lot with thermocouplers a simulator (Process calibrator) is a good investment, but there are some caveats with them.

[Gediminas]

You hit about 400 degrees in your chart, that is not from a solder iron (Or you mistreat your iron  ), but a flame makes sense.

No, I am not mistreat my iron, here is the little thing, in size little bit bigger, then a pencil, but very, very hot:

[Gediminas]

If you work a lot with thermocouplers a simulator (Process calibrator) is a good investment, but there are some caveats with them.

I looked at the good  thermocouplers simulators, the price is something I can not justify. If I will needed for the work, then it is no problem, but for mostly hobby, it is no no.

[HKJ]

I looked at the good  thermocouplers simulators, the price is something I can not justify. If I will needed for the work, then it is no problem, but for mostly hobby, it is no no.

Check EBAY and AliExpress, you can find some moderately priced process calibrators and many of them support thermocouplers. They are not super high precision (In praxis, specifications may overstate the precision), but for most purposes they are acceptable.
When testing thermocoupler measurement devices you generally have two parameters: Absolute precision (offset) and how well they adhere to the curve.
Also be aware that a termocoupler measures temperature differences and that can give some issues.

[Gediminas]

______how well they adhere to the curve.
Also be aware that a termocoupler measures temperature differences and that can give some issues.

Yes, how well they adhere to the curve, that is programmable thing, on factory made thermometers not possible to change, they will have hard-coded look up table for that.
Temperature differences will make some troubles too, internal thermo sensor for ambient temperature compensation should also be working properly by it self and in soft.
But I will look at places like Aliexpress. Recently I bought Yaorea YR1035+ battery impedance meter from Aliexpress, 0-200 ohm, 0-100V. Was little bit impressed, turns out it is not crappy device. They even send instructions in English, and device menu was in English already.

[Gediminas]

Tenma Time Test

Now I am editing this post at 6:20 AM, Tenma was running with TC all evening and all night without connection drop or other problems, I think it is stable.

[Gediminas]

You hit about 400 degrees in your chart, that is not from a solder iron (Or you mistreat your iron  ), but a flame makes sense.

Ok, I need to confess. Some years ago I had Weller soldering iron (I actually still have it) and I needed to solder inductor of a very thick copper wire to the graphics card power section
(the pcb there was multilayer ad was made almost from pure copper with enormous thermo-mass).
It was no way to solder with my Weller.
So, I stetted Weller to max 450 °C and when it heated up I blasted soldering iron tip with the blow torch to heated up it even much more,
then I soldered inductor with no problems. After some time soldering iron died (the hand piece, power supply was ok).
I bought new hand piece (they are sold separately), and never mistreated it again.

[HKJ]

Yes, how well they adhere to the curve, that is programmable thing, on factory made thermometers not possible to change, they will have hard-coded look up table for that.

When using digital termocoupler chips the curve is wired into the chip, in a DMM it may be in the software (I have seen some DMM's that gives silly answer at very high or low temperatures).

Temperature differences will make some troubles too, internal thermo sensor for ambient temperature compensation should also be working properly by it self and in soft.

The main problem with that sensor is placement, I have a Fluke thermocoupler meter where it is basically glued to the connector, but all the other thermocoupler meters I have it is far from the connector, i.e. you may need to let the meter stabilize for a few hours before it is precise.

But I will look at places like Aliexpress. Recently I bought Yaorea YR1035+ battery impedance meter from Aliexpress, 0-200 ohm, 0-100V. Was little bit impressed, turns out it is not crappy device. They even send instructions in English, and device menu was in English already.

I have looked at the version without the +: https://lygte-info.dk/review/InternalResistanceMeterYR1035%20UK.html

Tenma Time Test
Now I am editing this post at 6:20 AM, Tenma was running with TC all evening and all night without connection drop or other problems, I think it is stable.

Nice to hear. I would expect it to be stable, TC do not have any issues running and logging for days and can handle millions of samples.

So, I stetted Weller to max 450 °C and when it heated up I blasted soldering iron tip with the blow torch to heated up it even much more,

You can get high power hand pieces, I have a WP120 (120Watt) with a thick tip for that kind of work and a WP80 with a thin tip for more normal work.

[Gediminas]

The main problem with that sensor is placement, I have a Fluke thermocoupler meter where it is basically glued to the connector, but all the other thermocoupler meters I have it is far from the connector, i.e. you may need to let the meter stabilize for a few hours before it is precise.

Yes, Tenma 72-7715 has thermosensor between connectors:



But I have Brymen 869S (which also supports two thermocoupless), not sure if it even has compensation sensor, or where it is?

[Gediminas]

Tenma Time Test
Now I am editing this post at 6:20 AM, Tenma was running with TC all evening and all night without connection drop or other problems, I think it is stable.

Nice to hear. I would expect it to be stable, TC do not have any issues running and logging for days and can handle millions of samples.

I tested for data transmission drop, TC just records zeros and when transmission begins again, TC continues to record data:



Only if I physically disconnect and reconnect serial to USB atapter from the PC, TC continues work and logging is running, but it not reconnects thermometer, and "Reconnect" button is disabled:

[Gediminas]

You can get high power hand pieces, I have a WP120 (120Watt) with a thick tip for that kind of work and a WP80 with a thin tip for more normal work.

For sure you need to have proper tools for the job, at that time I needed job to be done right now and had only one iron with small tips for regular pcb soldering.
Today situation is better, Here is picture of my biggest iron for soldering super thick wires and connectors, and smallest cartridge:

[HKJ]

Yes, Tenma 72-7715 has thermosensor between connectors:

It would be even better on the PCB just below the input connector.

But I have Brymen 869S (which also supports two thermocoupless), not sure if it even has compensation sensor, or where it is?

The temperature sensor is usually build into the DMM chip and that means a long settling time if you move the DMM to a different environment.

[HKJ]

I tested for data transmission drop, TC just records zeros and when transmission begins again, TC continues to record data:

You may be able to change that on the configuration page with the "Timeout handling" (Not all drivers uses it and I do not remember if Block does).

Only if I physically disconnect and reconnect serial to USB atapter from the PC, TC continues work and logging is running, but it not reconnects thermometer, and "Reconnect" button is disabled:

Reconnect is always disabled when logging. You have to stop logging first, then you can reconnect and start over.
TC do not know what devices will respond to a reconnect and for that reason it need to reinitialize with the devices connected after the reconnect.
Somebody asked about how to save and restart logging, because he wanted to log over very long time. I posted a script that can be used for that and adding a #RECONNECT and #WAITREADY statement to it would do a reconnect each time and maybe recover any lost devices.

[Gediminas]

I tested for data transmission drop, TC just records zeros and when transmission begins again, TC continues to record data:

You may be able to change that on the configuration page with the "Timeout handling" (Not all drivers uses it and I do not remember if Block does).

That is not the problem, it works exactly how I expect it to work. I just tested what will happen if thermometer will stop sending data for short period.

Only if I physically disconnect and reconnect serial to USB atapter from the PC, TC continues work and logging is running, but it not reconnects thermometer, and "Reconnect" button is disabled:

Reconnect is always disabled when logging. You have to stop logging first, then you can reconnect and start over.
TC do not know what devices will respond to a reconnect and for that reason it need to reinitialize with the devices connected after the reconnect.
Somebody asked about how to save and restart logging, because he wanted to log over very long time. I posted a script that can be used for that and adding a #RECONNECT and #WAITREADY statement to it would do a reconnect each time and maybe recover any lost devices.

Ok, understand.
Here I tested what will happen if com port disappears  for short time, but if it will happen, then again, it will be device problem to not working correctly, nothing wrong with the TC.
But thanks for the explanation of "pause and restart logging".

[Gediminas]

You may be able to change that on the configuration page with the "Timeout handling" (Not all drivers uses it and I do not remember if Block does).

Block does. I tested.

[Gediminas]

But I will look at places like Aliexpress. Recently I bought Yaorea YR1035+ battery impedance meter from Aliexpress, 0-200 ohm, 0-100V. Was little bit impressed, turns out it is not crappy device. They even send instructions in English, and device menu was in English already.

I have looked at the version without the +: https://lygte-info.dk/review/InternalResistanceMeterYR1035%20UK.html

do not know exactly what is the difference between them, but physically it is different, circuit boards is different too. Works very nice.


By the way, do you still test batteries? This is how I found TC software, I was looking 18650 cell comparisons on your site when was searching for good cells to replace in my Dewalt drill.
Finally I bought Murata VTC5D, but did not found this batteries tested on your site. I got recommended for two shops, which supposedly sell original cells, it is NKON.nl and Akkuteile.de
and bought VTC5D batteries from both shops, then tested for matching. From NKON all batteries was mathinh perfectly and was from the same batch with close serial numbers. From Akkuteile too. but between NKON and Akkuteile was small difference in capacity (discharge curves was identical).
Here is the pictrure of it:



I still have some new untouched batteries from Akkuteile. If you want I could send you two.

This was tested with original Tenma 72-13210 DC Load software (which is extremely limited), then I started using Test Controller.

[Gertjan]

In TestController, I expect when using [LOC], that a ++loc is sent to the meter (and intercepted by the GPIB controller). But this is not the case. Nothing is sent. And nothing appears in the debug log...

I wrote a as small as possible definition for testing, and it seems that none of the TC GPIB commands are working. (I tried  [CLR], [LLO] and  [LOC] ). Example: #finalCmd [LOC];  or  #finalCmd [LOC];[500];
So these findings are in line with the post of dl6lr above...

Can these commands only be used with the ASCII driver, or is something broken? I was testing with a AR488.

The beta version I posted a link to above (Post #3220) has added these  commands to the SCPIx driver, but it is not tested.

Hi HKJ,
I found the root cause of these problems. The Prologix commands should be in lowercase, and TC outputs CAPITALS.

I did tests, comparing AR488 with the original Prologix GPIB adapter:


IMG 1837  AR488 and Prologix-2000pix.jpg

It turns out that the commands in the Prologix command language should be in lowercase. The AR488 is tolerant for CAPITAL LETTERS, and executes the command just the same. But the original Prologix is not tolerant! A command in CAPITAL LETTERS is NOT executed, and the Prologix returns an error message.

A piece of TC debug log of the shutdown procedure (ASCII driver, for Keithley 199 I was working on):

Code: [Select]

with original Prologix
=============
;; K199: Tx <clear>
;; K199: Tx <tx [CLR]>
;; COM27: Tx: <++CLR.> 2B 2B 43 4C 52 0A  <--- UPPERCASE, is not a valid command
;; K199: Delay: 1000ms
;; K199: Tx <goLocal>
;; K199: Tx <tx [LOC]>
;; COM27: Tx: <++LOC.> 2B 2B 4C 4F 43 0A  <--- UPPERCASE, is not a valid command

Using a AR488
=========
;; K199: Tx <clear>
;; K199: Tx <tx [CLR]>
;; COM15: Tx: <++CLR.> 2B 2B 43 4C 52 0A  <--- UPPERCASE, but is executed by AR488
;; K199: Delay: 1000ms
;; K199: Tx <goLocal>
;; K199: Tx <tx [LOC]>
;; COM15: Tx: <++LOC.> 2B 2B 4C 4F 43 0A  <--- UPPERCASE, but is executed by AR488
;; K199: Delay: 1000ms
;; COM15: Close
- With the Prologix the ++CLR and ++LOC are not executed, the meter stays in remote.
- with the AR488 ++CLR and ++LOC are properly executed, the meter goes to local control, end the COM port is properly closed.

I checked the Prologix behaviour in a terminal program:

Code: [Select]

++ver
Prologix GPIB-USB Controller version 6.107
++VER
Unrecognized command
++CLR
Unrecognized command
++LOC
Unrecognized command
Please can you adjust the TC code so it will output ++ commands in lowercase for [CLR], [LLO], [LOC] and [TRG]?
(The GPIB init commands are fine, TC sends these in lowercase.)

regards, Gertjan.

[HKJ]

It turns out that the commands in the Prologix command language should be in lowercase. The AR488 is tolerant for CAPITAL LETTERS, and executes the command just the same. But the original Prologix is not tolerant! A command in CAPITAL LETTERS is NOT executed, and the Prologix returns an error message.

Thanks, this will be fixed in next release.

[HKJ]

By the way, do you still test batteries?

Not at the current time.