To create the user interface, there are several tools available such as Visual Studio, Serial monitor of Arduino and etc. However, this project uses LabVIEW due to several reasons. LabVIEW is an easy tool that can be used to create a user interface to view data. Besides, it also has various drivers and tools available to interface between PC and hardware. Another highlight of LabVIEW is that graphical programming is used, unlike any other conventional text based programming. This powerful tool commonly used by the engineers in industry to solve complex engineering challenge.
To read all the serial data coming into the COM port of PC, VISA driver is used. VISA is a driver that is used to provide programming interface between hardware and development environment. Using the string functionality from Labview, the data packet sent by the CT-ARM can be easily breakdown into individual information.
The image above shows how the front panel looks like. Brief descriptions of each section as below:
#1 Three meter indicator is used to show the state of water level from each node.
#2 Sensor node indicates which node that has detected an error.
#3 Boolean indicator to show which error warning is detected.
#4 Real time display and serial monitor similar to Arduino is created to view the data coming in.
#5 Three graphs to display each axis accelerometer reading. Within each graph, 3 waveform displays the reading from each node.
#6 Graph to display the load cell reading from each node.
The prototype for sensor node and central hub are all built on breadboard as shown in the images below.
