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The Design Corner -- Hobby Corner
Electronic Tricks & Helpful Hints
Suggestions, Tips & Rules of Thumb for Protoype Breadboards
Last Updated:
Saturday, October 04, 2008 03:07 AM |
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A VCR AND TV CAMERA MAKE A CHEAP DATA LOGGER |
| Sometimes recording the results of a test requires as much ingenuity as designing the product. Consider a situation which requires the collection of many
different variables over a long period of time. Perhaps you are conducting temperature cycle tests on an electronic circuit and you want to know what changes occur in circuit performance over a
24 hour period. You could stay up all night and collect the data yourself. You could rent an expensive data logger to record the data or spend days setting up a computer system. However, a more
clever solution is available. Why not set up a VCR and television camera so all the voltmeters, frequency counters, oscilloscopes, thermometers, clocks needed to measure the data are positioned
in front of the TV camera. You could use the built-in timer in the VCR to start and stop the recording when you need to record the data. You could even play actor and step into the scene to
point out something or make some general audio comments. Since a good VCR or camcorder can record 6 or 8 hours of video on one cassette tape, you would only have to reload the machine 4 times
over the full 24 hours of testing. |
| Later, after the tests are stored on tape, you can use those special fast forward and freeze frame playback features found on most quality VCRs to quickly
retrieve and study your data. For a fraction of the cost of a fancy data logging system you can rent all the recording power you need from your local video store. |
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