ElastiSense DS Series Portable Test Kit Instruction Manual
- June 1, 2024
- ElastiSense
Table of Contents
Portable Test Kit – Operating and Service Instructions
Thank you for buying the ElastiSense Portable Test Kit that operates together with one or two of our robust and resilient Electro-Active Polymer (EAP) based displacement sensors of the DS series
Connecting the parts of the kit
Up to two ElastiSense DS sensors are supported by the Portable Test Kit when
connected to the Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) by the connection cable DAU-DS
(for each DS sensor that is ordered also one connection cable CMB-DS (standard
3m) shall be ordered). Additional to that, the DAU must be connected to the
24 VDC power supply that is delivered as a part of the kit and to a Control
Panel (=> any Windows PC with XP SP3 or higher) over a standard USB cable that
also is shipped with the kit. A Software package that is used to control the
DAU, extract measured data and to present and store recorded data to a .txt
file is a part of the basic kit package as well. This control software comes
with the kit on a USB stick.
In figure 1. the parts of the system are shown together with the connections
between them in the maximal configuration with two sensors.
Software Installation and Starting Measurements
When installing the Basic Monitoring System software on your control panel, please just follow the on-screen instructions afterclicking at the setup.exe file found on the USB stick that came with the kit. When the software is being installed on the control panel, the first configuration screen will look like this:
Once the installation is complete, you will have to restart the control panel and connect the parts of the Portable Test Kit as shown in figure 1 to start doing measurements.
Start Up Screen Picture
Having installed the softwareand connected the Portable Test Kit USB cable to a free USB slot in the control panel, you will see a window similar to this one when starting the newly installed software:
Under the first tab “Main”, you will be asked to enter the model number of the
sensor(s) applied (e.g. DS20, indicating that you are working with
displacement sensors with a measurement range of 20 mm) – this will also
automatically optimise the display range showing the actual sensor
measurement. In the actual example we use two DS20 sensors (marked with “blue”
and “red”).
By pressing the “Remove offset” button both measured distance values are
“zero’ed”, as you can see in the screenshot above at approximately 09:32.05.
By clicking and marking the mm values for the Displacement axis with the
cursor, you may also specify that only what is measured in a narrower band
than full scale shall be displayed, which will give you a better optical
resolution within the selected band. To do this, you simply replace the marked
mm value through a value of your choice .
Conversely you may also expand the shown value area by the same procedure,
should this be needed for your optimal data presentation – in the example
above, you can see, that the original top maximumof 20 mm has been changed to
25 mm in this way.
In the “Main” window you can also select the desired update frequency (update
rate for sampling the actual displacement seen by the applied sensor(s)). It
is recommended to choose the lowest necessary update frequency which provides
the needed resolution in time, to delimit the size of the data file that you
may be dumping logged data to as described below.
Moreover, there is a toggle-button for activation of data logging (the “Save”
button, which text will turn into “Saving” in green as a status message, when
activated), which will store the measured displacement dataon the hard desk of
the control panel at a location specified by the operator after activation.
The measurement datafrom the last 10 seconds will be shown on the screen. If
data logging hasn’t been activated, it will be lost after having been shown.
In the blue and read fields at the bottom to the left, the actually measured
displacement data will additionally be shown real-time as values in mm.
The second tab “Add on”will only be active when you have ordered an option.
One “standard option” is the tool for finding peaks and valleys in a recorded
signal cyclical, which will not be described in this standard manual, yet its
tab “Add-on” is shown in the screenshots applied here.
Main Tab – Example of a Standard Measurement, Cyclical Movement
After starting a measurement, you will e.g. see a screen like the one below
here. It is showing the recording of the cyclic movement of two plates
relative to each other, where the two displacement sensors are placed
diagonally opposite to each other. Because the measured displacement is a
cyclical one, the sensors must be “zero’ed” where the displacement is at its
minimum prior to recording. In our case this is done approximately at 09:38:13
by pressing the “remove offset” button.
For the first four and a half cycles thereafter (approximately until 09:38:18)
the bottom positions of the two sensors are fully aligned, thereafter an
obstacle (two business cards) is inserted close to Sensor 1 – accordingly, it
cannot reach 0 anymore and it is in addition to that seen on the signal from
sensor 2 that the whole plate is tilted a bit due to the obstacle.
If you have activated data logging by pushing the “Save” button, all your
measured sensor data will be saved to a document in .txt format. The data will
be presented in the way shown below, when opening the document that you have
dumped it to.
You can see that data in this case (from another measurement than the former
one) was collected 10 times per second on the date stated at the top of the
excerpt.
When starting the recording, you will be advised to state the name and location of this data file. After recording the data may e.g. be copied and pasted into an Excel document for further treatment, presentation etc.
Warranty and Service
ElastiSense Sensor Technology products are warranted against defects in materials or workmanship (for ElastiSense sensors used with the Basic Monitoring System, please confer with the specific warranty regulations covering these products). The warranty applies for two years. All faulty units must be shipped back to the manufacturer for all warranty claims.
Declaration of Conformities
We declare that this product has been tested for conformity with all relevant
EU regulations. If you have specific issues related to this, you are very
welcometo direct such requests to
[email protected]
ElastiSense Sensor Technology
[email protected]
www.elastisense.com
Bjerndrup Bygade 23,
DK-6200 Aabenraa, Denmark
www.elastisense.com ElastiSense Sensor Technology, Bjerndrup Bygade 23, DK-6200 Aabenraa