In this video I’m going to talk about the LabQuest Datalogger. How to use it and more importantly how to get your data off of it. I’ve broken down the video into several sections so if you want to skip ahead feel free. The first section is about basic usage of the LabQuest. I’ll show you how you can connect probes and sensors. I’ll also say a little about the user interface and how to navigate the software. The next section is about saving your files to a USB drive. You can check out a USB drive from the stockroom, but we would prefer that you bring your own. After that we’ll look at some apps that you can put on your phone that will let you download your datasets to your phone or you can email the files to yourself from your phone. So lets get started On the left side of the LabQuest you’ll find three analog data ports. This is where you’re going to plug in any kind of probe sensor that we’ll use in this lab. On that same side there’s a USB port. This is where you would plug in your USB flash drive to store your files. The Digital ports on top near the power button we won’t use. We don’t have any digital probes or sensors. On the right side you’ll see a small hole for the 5 volt power supply. The rest of the ports we won’t use. Inside the LabQuest box that you’ll check out from the stockroom is the 5v power supply. As soon as you get back to the lab room you want to plug that into an outlet. Don’t be one of those student’s that believes the battery will last for 3 hours on a 10% charge. If the LabQuest shuts off because the battery was depleted, you will lose all of your data. You’ve been warned. You can verify that the power plug is connected by looking at the battery icon in the lower right corner. Now that we’ve got the LabQuest plugged in we can connect a sensor. The ends only go in one way and you should hear it click when it’s connected properly. It doesn’t matter which channel you plug the sensor into. It will show the channel number on the screen. You can see here that I plugged it into channel three. One thing you should keep in mind is that these things get a lot of use. If the probe or sensor seems like its acting funny, try a different channel. Sometimes the pins can get bent or can become corroded. Remember we work in a lab where there’s a lot of corrosive chemicals. For this week’s experiment you’re going to cool down some water and you want to take data over a period of 15 minutes. Tap on the Mode Button Inside the Mode pull down menu you can see there’s a lot of different options. For this experiment you’re going to use Time Based. In a week or so you’ll use the Events with Entry mode. Next tap inside the duration cell so you can edit the number. This experiment calls for 15 min. Type in 15 then tap OK. Now select the units. Next tap in the rate cell and set it to 50. The interval is auto adjusted so you don’t have to do anything with that. Then just tap on OK When you have everything setup and you’re ready to go, tap on the collect button I’m freezing some water so you’re going to see the temperature drop. You can see the current time and temperature in these boxes. We’ll speed things up here so it doesn’t take forever. You can see how the water went below zero and then suddenly came back to zero. That’s something you’ll have to identify and explain why that happens in lab. In the next part of the experiment you’re going to melt the ice you just froze. When you’ve got everything setup, tap on the collect button. You’ll get a menu asking if you want to store the last run. Make sure you tap on the store button. Otherwise you’ll lose your data. Now you’re heating the ice up. After this run finishes you should save your data to the flash drive. Or you can save it to your phone or email the file to yourself. You’ve spent at least a half hour collecting data. Right now that data is just living in memory on the labquest. If the power goes out or if there’s a software glitch, you could lose all of you’re data. To save your data tap on the FILE menu item and tap SAVE. Now one thing you should keep in mind about the SAVE option is that it will save the file in Vernier proprietary format .qmbl You can see that if we go back and tap on FILE and then OPEN. You can see that the mydata file is in the .qmbl format. The only way you can open this file is with Vernier’s Logger Pro software. You cannot open it in Excel. If you want to use Excel or any other graphing software for that matter you’ll need to export the file as a text file. Tap on FILE then EXPORT. It’s important when you export a file that you add the .txt extension. You’ll have difficulty opening the file in Excel later on if you don’t do this. If we go back to FILE and OPEN you won’t see the text file there because that’s not the file format that LabQuest uses. You have to tap on FILE and Export to see that the file is on the USB drive. Now let’s take a look at some of the other features of the LabQuest interface. Up at the top right you’ll see Run 2. The LabQuest stores each run in local memory and you can access each data set by clicking on the Run button. If I tap on Run 1 it will bring up the first dataset. Right now I’m in the Graph window. If I want to look at the sensor window I tap on the top left sensor icon to switch screens. Tap the graph icon to go back to the graph screen Tap the spreadsheet icon to see the data There’s an instructions viewer which we won’t use and a notes tab if you want to take notes which honestly it would be easier to just write things down in your lab notebook. The other menu items you can explore in lab. The next thing we need to talk about is connecting the LabQuest to the wireless network. Tap on the wireless icon in the bottom right. Make sure WiFi is ON. Tap on the Gear icon. Now if it asks you for your Roo-Secure username and password just Cancel out of it and go back into the Gear icon. It should then show you a list of available networks. You don’t really want to connect to Roo-Secure because you have to enter in your username and password on a public device. Somebody else is going to use the LabQuest after you do. If we go back to the previous screen you could set it to only remember your Roo-Secure credentials for a certain period of time. That’s fine but to be safe it’s probably best to just use Roo-Guest In the list of available networks Tap on Roo-Guest. You don’t need a username and password to sign in to Roo-Guest. A browser window may pop up and you’ll have to click on the Login button but that’s it. You don’t have to enter in your username and password. You can cancel out of these browser windows after you hit the login button. The next thing you want to verify is that Data Sharing is turned ON. Write down the IP address or leave this screen up for the next step. You need to change the WiFi network on your phone to Roo-Guest. Both devices need to be on the same network to share data. I want to reemphasize the part about being on the same network. Whether you choose to connect to Roo-Secure or Roo-Guest both devices must be on the same network. Roo- Secure and Roo-Guest are separate subnets and you will not be able to connect your phone to the LabQuest if they are on different subnets. Now that we have both the LabQuest and Phone on the same network we can connect them. Vernier currently has two different apps of Graphical Analysis, Graphical Analysis GW and Graphical Analysis 4. Personally, I think it’s easier to transfer your data using Graphical Analysis GW but it’s going to be phased out. First let’s look at Graphical Analysis GW. Tap on New Experiment Tap on Data Sharing Enter in the IP address of the LabQuest Tap on the share icon Tap on Data Tap on Mail Send the file to your email address. Now let’s look at Graphical Analysis 4 Tap on Data Sharing Tap on Specify Source Enter in the LabQuest’s IP address You can verify that all the data is present by looking at the tables or setting up multiple graphs. Tap on the untitled icon at the top left Tap on Export Tap on .csv. I’m not sure why that extra step is in there but it is. We’re not in Europe so leave the decimal format as a period Tap on Export Type in a name for the data file There is no share button which is annoying, so you have to go out of the Graphical Analysis 4 app and into your phone’s file manager. On the iPhone tap on Files Tap on On My iPhone Tap on Graphical Long press on the data file Tap on Share Tap on Mail Send the file to your email address