Solution to challenging sampling requirements

I wanted to share with your users a pretty simple solution to what we thought was going to be a difficult sampling control problem.

 We recently finished a project which required some unusual sampling schemes for Nortek Continental Profilers. In this application, our customer required 2 minutes of 1 Hz sampling, record each individual ping, then shut down for 2 hours before repeating the cycle. For each sampling event, they required that a new data file be created. Quite a unique requirement for the Nortek software to handle.

 Our solution was to use a fairly common program called “Advanced Task Scheduler” (ATS) to control the start and shut down of the profiler control software (Continental.exe).

 Here is what we have done:

 In Continetal.exe

 Create a deployment file (project.dep), sampling and profile interval at 1 sec. Specify disk destination for data, select ASCII format

 In Advanced Task Scheduler.exe

 Create a task to launch Continental.exe (time = 00:00:00)

 Use command line arguments -s -f project.dep (start sampling, output data to disk file, deployment file name)

 Create a task to stop sampling / Continental.exe  (00:02:00)

 Create a task to respond to the "Stop Data Collection?" prompt (00:02:05)

 Repeat cycle (02:00:00)

 Pretty simple. We have tested it out and it works well. Individual 1 Hz pings are recorded by Nortek software as expected, each 2 minute file is named by date and time. We also tested using Nortek Aquadopp Profilers, same successful result.

 The key is to use task scheduling software to control profiler software.

 I hope that someone may find this helpful.

 Best regards,

 Steve O’Malley

 OceanTechUSA, Inc

Hi Steve,

A very clever solution! Thanks for sharing! I am sure other users will find it useful, especially since the command line options are available with all our software.

Best regards,
Oistein Hurum