Sensor Settings
In this section of the Channel setup menu, you can adjust general sensor settings, such as physical quantity, unit, serial number,… as well as advanced settings.
General
The Used sensor dropdown list will show you all available sensors in the Sensor database that you can select. If you don’t have any saved sensors, you can create one by clicking the Create sensor button and enter the sensor serial number.
You can also select the measured physical quantity from the drop-down list. The unit changes based on the choosen quantity, but can be adjusted.
Once you select a sensor or create a new one, two new tabs will appear - Properties and Advanced.
Properties
The following properties are listed in this section:
- Serial number
- Model
- Manufacturer
- Calibration date - If the calibration is overdue, a warning will be shown in red.
- Calibration period (days)
- Cal initials
To edit them, click the Edit sensor button. Once you’re done, click Save sensor to save the changes.
Advanced
Same as Properties if you wish to make changes to this section, use the Edit sensor and Save sensor buttons.
Unlinked Sensor (sensor template)
Sensors typically have unique serial numbers and are linked to specific physical sensors. However, in some instances, the same sensor configuration is needed across multiple channels. This can be acomplished using unlinked sensors.
To unlink a sensor, you can either unlink an existing sensor by saving it as “unlinked”, or check the “always unlinked” column in the sensor editor. Alternatively, you can try assigning a regular sensor to multiple channels (or one channel in case the sensor is already in use on a different channel), and DewesoftX will ask you if you want to copy the sensor’s properties and create an unlinked sensor.
The second instance of the sensor detaches itself from the database, ensuring that any changes to the database do not impact these unlinked sensors. The sensor in the database then serves as a template, and can be very applied to multiple channel to configure them very quickly.
A typical application would be to configure the basic parameters for a strain amplifier for several channels, as shown on the image below.
Sensor Database
Dewesoft offers an efficient, helpful sensor database. In addition to linear scaling, which can be configured directly in Channel setup, the sensor database also offers scaling by table or polynomial, other information about sensor and definition of transfer curves.
Dewesoft has some predefined sensors in this database. But the predefined demo sensors are likely not what you would need for your application.
How to define your own sensors? To do that select in Options menu Editors / Analog sensors and the sensor editor will open.