Power Meter Logging

The number of measurements that can be stored is firstly limited by the amount of memory available to the meter as detailed in the catalogue table below:

On the Nova II (and hence its offshoot the Vega) we did set an arbitrary maximum time limitation of 600 hours for each log of Power measurements. This seemed reasonable at the time the Nova II was developed some 10 years ago.

Nevertheless, when logging Energy pulses on the Nova II and Vega, there is no maximum time limitation, only the limit of the maximum number of measurements that can be stored. The sample rate of pulses can be reduced in order to ensure that the available on-board memory does not fill up to quickly.

The newer StarBright meter is more flexible with logging. It logs to a disk-on-key, and hence the available memory can be very large. Unlike the Nova II and Vega, amongst the various log options on the StarBright is a Manual log mode which allows you to log either Power or Energy measurements until the available memory runs out.

Note: If transferring an enormous log file from StarBright to a PC for analysis by StarLab, StarLab can only analyse the first million measurements of the log file. In such a case you could use other data analysis packages such as Excel or MatLab.

StarLab provides the same logging setup and limitations no matter which meter/interface is used.

In the StarLab logging setup you can set a timeout of almost up to 500 hours, or a limit to the number of measurements of up to 10 million readings. Like the StarBright, here you can also change the interval/sample rate, and thereby reduce the log file size over a set time / extend the time when sampling.

We didn't put in a Manual log option, and we have limits, due to concerns with PC stability issues when logging huge files over very long periods (although with modern PC operating systems we could probably expand on this in future version if required).

In StarLab preferences you can set the log to write (flush) to the hard disc every 3 seconds as shown below.