Instruction manual

SECTION 1. SETTING UP THE NETWORK AND COMMUNICATING WITH THE DATALOGGER
PC208W, Version 3.0, Instruction Manual 1-9
Collected
Indicates the last area collected, how many Final
Storage locations were collected, and how many
Final Storage locations should have been
collected. (The CR10, CR10X, and CR23X are
the only supported dataloggers with a Final
Storage area 2.) For example, Area1 7/7
indicates that seven Final Storage locations were
collected from Area 1 on the last call. Area1 0/0
indicates that no locations where collected on the
last call, probably because there was no new
data. Area1 0/10 would indicate that 10 locations
were attempted but none were collected, possibly
due to a link failure.
Next Call
Indicates the next time to call. This is based on
the scheduling and retry parameters entered on
the SCHEDULE tab for the datalogger in the
SETUP window. If no date and time are
displayed, scheduling is not enabled. If a date
and time are displayed, but are grayed out, the
schedule has been paused by checking the
Pause Schedule check box at the bottom of the
status screen. A device's schedule can be
toggled on or off by selecting the device,
pressing the right mouse button, and choosing
Toggle On/Off or by pressing the Toggle On/Off
button.
1.4.2 LOW LEVEL I/O
Logging low level I/O is typically used to
troubleshoot a communication problem.
Select the View I/O button to display the actual
serial communications for all the serial ports.
The columns on the left contain the characters
transmitted by PC208W and those on the right
indicate characters received. Binary
(unprintable) characters are displayed as a
period “.” character. Since communication for
all serial ports is displayed and can occur
concurrently, it may be helpful to turn
scheduling off for all other sites when
troubleshooting a particular site.
The Log I/O to Disk checkbox is used to enable
logging to a file in PC208W’s working directory.
A separate file is used for each serial port. The
files are named IO$COM1.LOG for COM1,
IO$COM2.LOG for COM2 and so on. These
files use a hexadecimal format so binary
characters can be viewed.
1.4.3 COM SWF MESSAGES
Messages pertaining to datalogger
communications can be displayed by selecting
the View Messages button. Warning and Fault
messages are always displayed and logged to
disk in a file named SWF$.LOG. Status
messages are also displayed if you enable the
Show Status Messages checkbox and are
logged if you enable the Log Status Msgs box.
The log files will grow to a given size and then
will start to overwrite (ring) themselves
preventing them from consuming all disk space.
The first character of the message indicates the
type of messageStatus, Warning, or Fault.
The time the message occurred is given next.
The format is DD HH:MM:SS, where DD is the
day of the month, HH is the hour, MM the
minutes, and SS the seconds. The name of the
relevant device and actual message follow the
time.
1.4.4 PAUSE
When PC208W is first started, all scheduled
data collection is paused for 15 seconds. The
text for the box in the lower right corner of the
status window reads Startup Pause. After 15
seconds, the Pause Schedule box will be either
checked or unchecked, depending on its state
when you last closed PC208W. When Pause
Schedule is enabled, the Next Call information
for any devices with scheduled data collection
will be grayed out.
1.5 COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS
Command line parameters are used for further
automating data collection. Using command line
parameters, you can start PC208W and
automatically connect to stations, collect data,
and exit the program.
Command line parameters are entered from the
command prompt, from the Start | Run menu,
or specified on the executable line of a shortcut.
Up to 150 characters (including spaces) can be
specified on a command line. Each command
begins with a forward slash, /. A dash, -, should
separate the command and any parameters it
may have. If multiple commands are used on
one command line, they should be separated by
a space. Following are a list of command line
parameters that can be used with PC208W.