In the continuous effort to streamline laboratory operations and reduce manual intervention in experimental workflows, automating long-term setups is a practical necessity. To address this bottleneck, a custom physical reactor paired with a dedicated software application was developed for data collection processes.
Designing the Physical Architecture and Instrumentation
To monitor the internal environment, the system utilized an industrial dew point sensor. This sensor was biased using a 24V power supply from National Instruments (NI). The sensor's analog output, specifically a generated current signal (up to 20 mA), was continuously measured using a high-precision Keithley multimeter.
DewPt 2.5: The LabVIEW-Driven Core
To bridge the hardware control and data logging, a custom LabVIEW based windows application DewPt 2.5 was programmed in LabVIEW. This software designed to interface with the Keithley multimeter to run reliably for days or even weeks without interruption.
The application handles several critical operational tasks:
Continuous Automated Logging: Executes automated cycling processes, capturing moisture values consistently over extended timeframes.
Real-Time Signal Processing: Captures the incoming current measurements (mA) from the Keithley multimeter on the fly and converts them into the desired moisture measurement units.
Dynamic Visualization: Computes and graphs these derived values in real-time within the UI, allowing the user to visually estimate the precise cut-off points for the experiments.
Automated Archiving: Saves all raw current data and computed moisture values directly to local files for downstream analysis.
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