This presentation is about how we used LabVIEW to monitor fuel consumption and thermal output in a wood-fired boiler. The project was originally described as follows: "You need to measure weight and a couple of temperatures. There's some EPA standard you need to follow." By the end of the project we were tracking 15 temperatures, two pressures, one digital input, one 110V input, two 110V outputs, four weight channels, and manually entering three flow rates, barometric pressure, and relative humidity. The program started as a simple producer-consumer and ended as a hybrid producer-consumer/master-slave with six separate acquisition loops. This architecture made it possible to collect data reliably with such a large assembly of different processes. TDMS made data collection and subsequent analysis with Excel macros rapid and efficient. We used random data VIs to speed project development during off-line programming, and good coding practices allowed us to use legacy VIs with minimal updates. We will demonstrate the acquisition program using random data VIs, and show how to use macros to import and analyze TDMS files.
