Pico Technology makes freely available software for posting data acquisition results – graphs and tables – onto the World Wide Web

Citation

(2003), "Pico Technology makes freely available software for posting data acquisition results – graphs and tables – onto the World Wide Web", Sensor Review, Vol. 23 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2003.08723aab.005

Pico Technology makes freely available software for posting data acquisition results – graphs and tables – onto the World Wide Web

Pico Technology makes freely available software for posting data acquisition results – graphs and tables – onto the World Wide Web

Keywords: Data acquisition, Internet

PC-based instrumentation and data logging specialists Pico Technology has developed an easy means of posting graphical data acquisition recordings onto the World Wide Web (Plate 1). By running a simple file transfer protocol (FTP) script on a PC connected to either of Pico’s low-cost EnviroMon data loggers (the EL005 and EL008), users can post JPEG versions of EnviroMon’s graphs onto a web site.

Applications for this technology fall into two categories. The first is to “publish” data for the general public and/or customers to view: for example, those storing products and/or goods sensitive to heat, humidity or light may wish to publish their storage conditions to demonstrate their compliance to the goods’ storage requirements. The second application for the technology is to post data for internal use: for example, the remote monitoring of fridges, freezers and heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

Plate 1 Pico Technology makes freely available software for posting data acquisition results – graphs and tables – onto the World Wide Web

Mike Green, Pico Technology’s Managing Director, comments: “This is one of the most significant developments in low-cost remote data acquisition, the industry has seen. Everything the EnviroMon units can display graphically can be posted onto the World Wide Web as JPEGs.”

With even basic web authoring tools/software it is easy to build pages that contain dynamic data. For proof of this, readers should visit www.picotech.com/dynamic where Pico regularly posts data being captured in and around the company’s R&D facility near Cambridge. This data, sampled at 15 min intervals, is posted every 24 h.

“Anyone with web access can view historical data posted to a web site,” continues Green. “Importantly, visitors to the web site do not need to be running Pico software to view the graphs, as the FTP script is posting the graphs in JPEG format.”

The FTP script, called upload.ftp, is one of three contained in a file that users can download, free of charge, from www.picotech.com. The other scripts are, enviromon.bat, which also runs on the host PC and is responsible for scheduling the PC to post results, and Enviromon.html, which runs on the web server.

All three files are easy to edit – in an application like Notepad – and a simple installation guide and examples of settings are available at www.picotech.com/dynamic_guide.html. Once installed, the three scripts enable the user to post clear and easy to interpret colour graphs portraying historical data. In addition, it is possible to make available results as tables, which users can download (as comma separated value (CSV) tables) for a detailed account of the data captured.