The major update to include the facility to read directly from a specific multimeter is now available from the downloads section or
here.
I developed this addition to the logger so that I could easily explore the effect of environment temperature on my Hottop roasters. I use a webcam to read the roasters display and a multimeter connected via USB cable to read the environment temperature. This allows logging and charting of both temperatures as the roast progresses.
This is a screenshot of the chart tab showing my first roast using this approach. I did not attempt to control the environment temperature just to record it whilst controlling the roaster based on it's temperature display as usual. I used the thermocouple which is included with the meter for this test.
This is a screenshot of the digital multimeter (DMM) tab showing the output from the communication with the meter and the reading at the bottom right of the screen followed by the temperature gradient in degrees per minute. There are no drivers or configuration required for this multimeter, just connect it's cable, press it's RS232 button to start communication, then click the Start/Stop button on the roast logger to start reading it's data.
changes in version 0.5 14/1/2010Added ability to read temperature data directly (via USB cable) from a Victor 86 C multimeter in addition to reading data using optical character recognition from a webcam image of a roasters display.
Changed name of the program to RoastLogger as it is not now exclusively based on OCR
Added option to alarm on OCR/DMM2 temperature rather than OCR1 temperature
Added menu option to show or hide the edge/segment detection dialog each startup
A number of changes to allow users to overwrite versions of this program with later versions without losing their settings and any changes they have made to the log template
Help file updated to incorporate the above
Edit: The logger now reads data directly (via USB) from both the Victor 86 B and 86 C multimeters. See post dated Feb 23, 2010 - 10:33 AM for details and comparison of the multimeters.