OHAUS Ranger 3000 Scale
How to use the Ranger 3000 scale with a computer to collect data
Last updated
How to use the Ranger 3000 scale with a computer to collect data
Last updated
To connect the scale to the computer, you will first need a USB to RS232 serial cable. Currently (8/9/21), we have two such cables in the lab that should be stored with the scale.
The cable mounts to a serial connector on the underside of the scale below the red cover.
Once you have the cable, you will need to download some program to read from the serial cable. This tutorial will cover the use of the program suite Windmill ComDebug.
Download ComDebug here, then run the setup.exe file after extracting the folder.
From here, I will cover the needed steps for the different programs installed as part of ComDebug.
This program will set up the actual communication through the COM port. To begin, click on the button next to "Create a new Windmill Instrument File". Select "Serial Communications" to get into the "COM Port Settings" window.
Here, define the COM Port as whatever the USB to serial cable is assigned to in the Device Manager. The rest of the settings are defined to match the settings of the scale.
To access/change these settings on the scale, follow these steps:
With the scale turned on, press and hold the "Menu" button.
Keep pressing the "Print" button until "COM" is displayed on the screen, then press "On/Zero".
Use the "Print" button to cycle to the various settings, then "On/Zero" to enter the menus.
Page EN-21 in the Ranger 3000 manual covers the COM menu for more detail.
If changing the Baud Rate, you also need to change the properties of the port in the Device Manager. To do so, follow these steps:
Right click on the port and select "Properties"
Under "Port Settings", change the "Bits per second" property to the Baud Rate you have set
Once you have changed all of these settings, press "OK" to continue. This will take you to the Main Menu of comDebug.
If at any point you want to edit these settings again, simply press "Edit COM Port Settings".
The following tabs lay out the settings that need to be changed from this menu.
Press "Edit the data channel details" to define what variable(s) you want to store data under. In this case, we will be defining a Weight variable to store the value from the scale. I defined the different parameters as follows:
If there isn't anything in the Msg category yet, don't worry; we'll define that shortly. Once you are done defining the channel, exit out of the window.
Once all of these settings are defined, go back into the "Edit Message" menu to check if everything is working correctly. From this menu, press the "Run" button to open the "Display Screen" menu.
From here, set the "Sample Rate" as the value you set the "Data Persistence Time" value to before (in this case 50 ms = 0.05 s), then press "Start" to start displaying real-time data from the scale.
Once everything is working correctly, go back to the Main Menu and press "Save .IMD File" to save this setup. In the future, you can then open this setup again in ComDebug by selecting "Edit an existing Windmill Instrument File" in the start screen.
To use the other programs included with ComDebug, you also need to set up a .IML file. ComDebug only sets up a .IMD file.
When opening SetupIML, choose to "Create new setup" from the menu that opens. Choose whatever name you'd like (I chose RANGER) and press "OK".
The .IMD setup you configured in ComDebug should show up here. Then, just save the file and exit the application.
The logger allows you to display the readings off the scale in real time through the computer. Upon opening Logger, select "File > Load Hardware Setup". Locate where you saved the .IML file from earlier. The default location should be "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windmill Software\Windmill\SetUps".
Upon opening the hardware file, you will then choose which channels to connect to the logger. Find the channel you defined in ComDebug and move it over to "Connected Channels". You can change the connected channels at any time via the "Inputs" menu item.
From here, the top menu items change the logger in the following ways:
The settings window allows you to change the input read time, as well as how it displays the time stamps.
I haven't gotten the files that the logger saves to actually show up in the Data folder, so I generally just have the logger not save data to a file in the File Options window.
This is likely because another one of the Windmill programs is using the COM port. To fix this, close all Windmill programs, including the IML Devices that will only show up on the Taskbar.
