A few people have asked how I produce graphs like this one (click for larger version). 

 

There are four main parts to getting the graphs:

1) Get the Dynon to send the data on a serial port.

2) Capture the serial output on a Laptop (or similar) to a file.

3) Convert the Dynon formatted data file into a .csv file for a spreadsheet program.

4) Load the .csv into a spreadsheet and graph to your heart's content.

 

More detail on each one:

1) Set the Dynon to log to a serial port. This is covered in the Dynon pilots guide, but I can help if there are questions.

 

Dynon allows combinations of "system", "ADHRS", and "EMS" data. I chose all three. I also chose the slowest BAUD rate, 1200 if I recall, to reduce the amount of data. Per their timestamps, this seems to result in a record of a given type every few seconds. Plenty for what I am doing.

 

2) Capture the data from the Dynon serial port.

For hardware, I am using an HP laptop that has no serial ports, so I used a "Serial USB" adapter that I happened to have laying around. There are many different types of these, and again I can be more specific if needed.

 

For software, I am using a free program call "PUTTY" that will log whatever comes in a serial port to a file. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.htmlAll you need is the "putty.exe". There are a million other choices; anything that will log serial. I use Putty because I use it for some other things and already had it installed. Anything that will log will work.

 

It is also possible to use a small hardware based serial data logger, such as https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9530 

 

 

 

Now we have a file with the Dynon serial data in it. There are two more steps.

 

 

 

3) Translate the Dynon data, who's format is given in Section 19 of the Dynon install guide, into something that can be loaded to a spreadsheet for graphing. I chose to write a custom PERL program to do this. PERL is free to install on your computer, and I am more than willing to send my PERL program to anyone who asks. It may need slight adjustment for your sensors.

 

I am also willing to write a more "user friendly" program, that could run stand-alone, if several people are interested.

 

The PERL program produces a .csv file.

 

4) Load the .csv into a spreadsheet and graph away. This can be Microsoft Excel (cost money, but you may already have it), Open Office Calc (free, installs on your PC) or Google Docs (free, online).  I've used both Open Office and Excel.  Mostly, I use Open Office.

For more information, post questions here, or email me at "danal dot estes at gmail dot com"

 

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Great job Danal. Any idea on why Dynon is lagging so badly on making data logging easy? I know a significant percentage of their customers want it.

In one way, I am a bit frustrated with Dynon and not logging this to a file... it would seem very simple, given that they can log it to serial, and they already log internal things to disk.  Should only be a very small effort to stitch those things together. 

On the other hand, logging to a file would not really change much for us.  Only step (2) would really be different...  we'd still have to configure the Dynon in some way, still have to decode the file, and so forth.  So, in that light, for us to have something to "catch" the serial data is really not that big a deal.

Sorry for the non-answer, but I really can see both sides of this. 

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