Adafruit Data Logger Shield

By Adafruit Industries

Courtesy of Adafruit

Guide by Bill Earl

The new and improved logging shield

Our latest version of this popular shield has all the features of the popular original, but comes
pre-assembled. You can be up and running with it in less than 15 minutes - saving data to files on
any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted SD card, to be read by any plotting, spreadsheet or analysis
program. This tutorial will also show you how to use two free software programs to plot your
data. The included Real Time Clock timestamps all your data with the current time, so that you
know precisely what happened when!

The data logger is a reliable, well-rounded and versatile design. It is easily expanded or modified
and come well supported with online documentation and libraries.

Features:

 SD card interface works with FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards. 3.3v level shifter circuitry
prevents damage to your SD card
 Real time clock (RTC) keeps the time going even when the Arduino is unplugged. The battery
backup lasts for years
 Included libraries and example code for both SD and RTC mean you can get going quickly
 Prototyping area for soldering connectors, circuitry or sensors.
 Configurable indicator leds
 Onboard 3.3v regulator is both a reliable reference voltage and also reliably runs SD cards that
require a lot of power to run
Installing the Headers

The Adafruit Data Logger shield comes tested assembled with all components and microSD
socket already on it, but you'll still need need to put headers on so you can plug it into an
Arduino

We don't pre-assemble the headers on because there's two options! You can either use plain 0.1"
male headers (included with the shield) or Arduino Shield Stacking headers. Assembly with
male headers

Assembly with male headersMost people will be happy with assembling he shield with male
headers. The nice thing about using these is they don't add anything to the height of the project,
and they make a nice solid connection. However, you won't be able to stack another shield on
top. Trade offs!

Cut the headers to length:

Line the header strip up with the holes on the edge of the shield and cut 4 sections of header strip
to fit.

Position the headers:

Insert the header sections - long pins down - into the female headers on your Arduino.

Position the shield:

Align the shield with the header pins and press down.And solder!

Solder each pin to assure good electrical contact. For tips on soldering, refer to the Adafruit
Guide to Excellent Soldering.
Assembly with Stacking Headers:

Stacking headers give your data logger shield extra flexibility. You can combine it with other
shields such as the RGB/LCD Display shield to make a compact logging instrument complete
with a user interface. You can also stack it with one or more Proto-Shields to add even more
prototyping space for interfacing to sensors.

Stacking headers are installed from the top of the board instead of the bottom, so the procedure is
a little different than for installing simple male headers.
Position the headers:

Insert the headers from the top of the shield, then flip the shield over and place it on a flat
surface. Straighten the headers so that they are vertical.

And solder!

Solder each pin for a solid electrical connection.

Tip: Solder one pin from each header section. If any of them are crooked, simply re-heat the one
solder joint and straighten it by hand. Once all headers are straight, continue soldering the rest of
the pins.
Shield Overview

The datalogger shield has a few things to make it an excellent way to track data:

Top Left - There's a real time clock (RTC) which has a chip, crystal, and backup battery for up to
7 years of timekeeping.

Middle Left - an on-board 3.3V regulator keeps the shield's 3V parts running smoothly. There's
also a green PWR (Power) good LED.
Top Middle - A big SD card holder can fit any SD/MMC storage up to 32G and and small as
32Meg. If you have a MicroSD card, there are low cost adapters which will let you fit these in.
SD cards are tougher to lose than MicroSD. Simply Push or Pull the card into this slot.

Top Right - We have two user-configuratble LEDs. Connect a wire from any Arduino pin to L1
or L2 marked pads and pull high to turn on LED1 or LED2A reset button will reset the entire
Arduino, handy for when you want to restart the board.

Middle - A level shifter keeps the SD card safe from the potentially-damaging 5V signals from
the Arduino. It will work with 3V signals as well.

We also have some extra breakouts shown above, around the breakout board area

 3V - this is the 3V out of the regulator. Its a good quality 3.3V reference which you may want to
power sensors. Up to 50mA is available
 SQ - this is the optional Squarewave output from the RTC. You have to send the command to
turn this on but its a way of optionally getting a precision squarewave. We use it primarily for
testing
  WP - this is the Write Protect pad on the SD card, you can use this to detect if the write-protect
tab is on the card by checking this pin
 CD - this is the card detect pad on the SD card. When this is connected to ground, an SD card is
inserted. We suggest using the internal pullup on an Arduino pin if you want to use this pad
 CS - this is the Chip Select pin for the SD card. If you need to cut the trace to pin 10 because it is
conflicting, this pad can be soldered to any digital pin and the software re-uploaded
 L2 and L1 - these are optional user-LEDs. Connect to any digital pin, pull high to turn on the
corresponding LED. The LEDs already have 470 ohm resistors in series.

Using the Real Time Clock

What is a Real Time Clock?

When logging data, its often really really useful to have timestamps! That way you can take data
one minute apart (by checking the clock) or noting at what time of day the data was logged.

The Arduino does have a built-in timekeeper called millis() and theres also timers built into the
chip that can keep track of longer time periods like minutes or days. So why would you want to
have a separate RTC chip? Well, the biggest reason is that millis() only keeps track of time since
the Arduino was last powered - that means that when the power is turned on, the millisecond
timer is set back to 0. The Arduino doesnt know its 'Tuesday' or 'March 8th' all it can tell is 'Its
been 14,000 milliseconds since I was last turned on'.

OK so what if you wanted to set the time on the Arduino? You'd have to program in the date and
time and you could have it count from that point on. But if it lost power, you'd have to reset the
time. Much like very cheap alarm clocks: every time they lose power they blink 12:00

While this sort of basic timekeeping is OK for some projects, a data-logger will need to have
consistant timekeeping that doesnt reset when the Arduino battery dies or is
reprogrammed. Thus, we include a separate RTC! The RTC chip is a specialized chip that just
keeps track of time. It can count leap-years and knows how many days are in a month, but it
doesn't take care of Daylight Savings Time (because it changes from place to place)

This image shows a computer motherboard with a Real Time Clock called the DS1387. Theres a
lithium battery in there which is why its so big.

The RTC we'll be using is the DS1307. It's low cost, easy to solder, and can run for years on a
very small coin cell.As long as it has a coin cell to run it, the DS1307 will merrily tick along for
a long time, even when the Arduino loses power, or is reprogrammed.

Talking to the RTC

The RTC is an i2c device, which means it uses 2 wires to to communicate. These two wires are
used to set the time and retreive it. On the Arduino, the pins are 'fixed' to be Analog 4 and 5 for
the built in i2c capability. This is a bit annoying since of course we want to have up to 6 analog
inputs to read data and now we've lost two. There is a way to use other pins...however, the
hardware is by default set up for Analog 4 and 5 so lets start with that and then later we'll show
how to modify the shield!

For the RTC library, we'll be using a fork of JeeLab's excellent RTC library. Please download it
now. Then install it in your Arduino directory in a folder called RTClib.

First RTC test

The first thing we'll demonstrate is a test sketch that will read the time from the RTC once a
second. We'll also show what happens if you remove the battery and replace it since that causes
the RTC to halt. So to start, remove the battery from the holder while the Arduino is not powered
or plugged into USB. Wait 3 seconds and then replace the battery. This resets the RTC chip.
Now load up the following sketch (which is also found in Examples->RTClib->ds1307) and
upload it to your Arduino with the datalogger shield on!

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// Date and time functions using a DS1307 RTC connected via I2C and Wire lib

#include <Wire.h>
#include "RTClib.h"

RTC_DS1307 RTC;

void setup () {
Serial.begin(57600);
Wire.begin();
RTC.begin();

if (! RTC.isrunning()) {
Serial.println("RTC is NOT running!");
// following line sets the RTC to the date & time this sketch was
compiled
// uncomment it & upload to set the time, date and start run the RTC!
//RTC.adjust(DateTime(__DATE__, __TIME__));
}

void loop () {
DateTime now = RTC.now();

Serial.print(now.year(), DEC);
Serial.print('/');
Serial.print(now.month(), DEC);
Serial.print('/');
Serial.print(now.day(), DEC);
Serial.print(' ');
Serial.print(now.hour(), DEC);
 Serial.print(':');
Serial.print(now.minute(), DEC);
Serial.print(':');
Serial.print(now.second(), DEC);
Serial.println();

Serial.print(" since 1970 = ");

Serial.print(now.unixtime());
Serial.print("s = ");
Serial.print(now.unixtime() / 86400L);
Serial.println("d");

// calculate a date which is 7 days and 30 seconds into the future

DateTime future (now.unixtime() 7 * 86400L 30);

Serial.print(" now 7d 30s: ");

Serial.print(future.year(), DEC);
Serial.print('/');
Serial.print(future.month(), DEC);
Serial.print('/');
Serial.print(future.day(), DEC);
Serial.print(' ');
Serial.print(future.hour(), DEC);
Serial.print(':');
Serial.print(future.minute(), DEC);
Serial.print(':');
Serial.print(future.second(), DEC);
Serial.println();

Serial.println();
delay(3000);
}

Now run the Serial terminal and make sure the baud rate is set correctly at 57600bps you should
see the following:
Whenever the RTC chip loses all power (including the backup battery) it will report the time as
0:0:0 and it won't count seconds (its stopped). Whenever you set the time, this will kickstart the
clock ticking. So basically the upshot here is that you should never ever remove the battery once
you've set the time. You shouldn't have to and the battery holder is very snug so unless the board
is crushed, the battery wont 'fall out'

Setting the time

With the same sketch loaded, uncomment the line that starts with RTC.adjust like so://
following line sets the RTC to the date & time this sketch was compiled
RTC.adjust(DateTime(__DATE__, __TIME__));

This line is very cute, what it does is take the Date and Time according the computer you're
using (right when you compile the code) and uses that to program the RTC. If your computer
time is not set right you should fix that first. Then you must press the Upload button to compile
and then immediately upload. If you compile and then upload later, the clock will be off by that
amount of time.

Then open up the Serial monitor window to show that the time has been set
From now on, you wont have to ever set the time again: the battery will last 5 or more years

Reading the time

Now that the RTC is merrily ticking away, we'll want to query it for the time. Lets look at the
sketch again to see how this is done

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void loop () {
DateTime now = RTC.now();

Serial.print(now.year(), DEC);
Serial.print('/');
Serial.print(now.month(), DEC);
Serial.print('/');
Serial.print(now.day(), DEC);
Serial.print(' ');
Serial.print(now.hour(), DEC);
Serial.print(':');
Serial.print(now.minute(), DEC);
Serial.print(':');
Serial.print(now.second(), DEC);
Serial.println();
There's pretty much only one way to get the time using the RTClib, which is to call now(), a
function that returns a DateTime object that describes the year, month, day, hour, minute and
second when you called now().

There are some RTC libraries that instead have you call something like RTC.year() and
RTC.hour() to get the current year and hour. However, there's one problem where if you happen
to ask for the minute right at 3:14:59 just before the next minute rolls over, and then the second
right after the minute rolls over (so at 3:15:00) you'll see the time as 3:14:00 which is a minute
off. If you did it the other way around you could get 3:15:59 - so one minute off in the other
direction.

Because this is not an especially unlikely occurance - particularly if you're querying the time
pretty often - we take a 'snapshot' of the time from the RTC all at once and then we can pull it
apart into day() or second() as seen above. Its a tiny bit more effort but we think its worth it to
avoid mistakes!

We can also get a 'timestamp' out of the DateTime object by calling unixtime which counts the
number of seconds (not counting leapseconds) since midnight, January 1st 1970

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Serial.print(" since 2000 = ");
Serial.print(now.unixtime());
Serial.print("s = ");
Serial.print(now.unixtime() / 86400L);
Serial.println("d");

Since there are 60*60*24 = 86400 seconds in a day, we can easily count days since then as well.
This might be useful when you want to keep track of how much time has passed since the last
query, making some math a lot easier (like checking if its been 5 minutes later, just see if
unixtime() has increased by 300, you dont have to worry about hour changes)

Using the SD Card

The other half of the data logger shield is the SD card. The SD card is how we store long term
data. While the Arduino chip has a permanent EEPROM storage, its only a couple hundred bytes
- tiny compared to a 2 gig SD card. SD cards are so cheap and easy to get, its an obvious choice
for long term storage so we use them for the shield.

The shield kit doesn't come with an SD card but we carry one in the shop that is guaranteed to
work. Pretty much any SD card should work but be aware that some cheap cards are 'fakes' and
can cause headaches.You'll also need a way to read and write from the SD card. Sometimes you
can use your camera and MP3 player - when its plugged in you will be able to see it as a disk. Or
you may need an SD card reader. The shield doesnt have the ability to display the SD card as a
'hard disk' like some MP3 players or games, the Arduino does not have the hardware for that, so
you will need an external reader!

Formatting under Windows/Mac

If you bought an SD card, chances are it's already pre-formatted with a FAT filesystem. However
you may have problems with how the factory formats the card, or if it's an old card it needs to be
reformatted. The Arduino SD library we use supports both FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems. If
you have a very small SD card, say 8-32 Megabytes you might find it is formatted FAT12 which
isnt supported. You'll have to reformat these card. Either way, its always good idea to format the
card before using, even if its new! Note that formatting will erase the card so save anything you
want first.

Download the formatter from https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

Download it and run it on your computer, there's also a manual linked from that page for use

For Mega and Leonardo Users!

If you are using an Leonardo or Mega, you will have to update the SD card library to add 'SD
card on any pin' support. To update your library, follow the instructions on this page.
Next, select the CardInfo example sketch

This sketch will not write any data to the card, just tell you if it managed to recognize it, and
some information about it. This can be very useful when trying to figure out whether an SD card
is supported. Before trying out a new card, please try out this sketch!

Go to the beginning of the sketch and make sure that the chipSelect line is correct, for the
datalogger shield we 're using digital pin 10 so change it to 10!
Mega and Leonardo Users!

Don't forget to change sd.begin() to specify the pin numbers as below

SD.begin(10,11,12,13);

OK, now insert the SD card into the Arduino and upload the sketch
Open up the Serial Monitor and type in a character into the text box (& hit send) when prompted.
You'll probably get something like the following:
Its mostly gibberish, but its useful to see the Volume type is FAT16 part as well as the size of
the card (about 2 GB which is what it should be) etc.

If you have a bad card, which seems to happen more with ripoff version of good brands, you
might see:

The card mostly responded, but the data is all bad. Note that the Product ID is "N/A" and there
is no Manufacturer ID or OEM ID. This card returned some SD errors. Its basically a bad
scene, I only keep this card around to use as an example of a bad card! If you get something like
this (where there is a response but its corrupted) you should toss the card

Finally, try taking out the SD card and running the sketch again, you'll get the following,

It couldn't even initialize the SD card. This can also happen if there's a soldering error or if the
card is really damaged

If you're having SD card problems, we suggest using the SD formatter mentioned above first to
make sure the card is clean and ready to use!
For the Mega and Leonardo

If you are using an Leonardo or Mega, you will have to replace the existing SD card library to
add 'SD card on any pin' support. If you have an Uno/Duemilanove/Diecimila, this is not
required.

First, find the "core libraries" folder - if you are using Windows or Linux, it will be in the folder
that contains the Arduino executable, look for a libraries folder. Inside you will see an SD
folder (inside that will be SD.cpp SD.h etc)

In the libraries folder, make a new folder called SDbackup. Then drag the SDfolder into
SDbackup, this will 'hide' the old SD library without deleting it

Now we'll grab the new SD library, visit https://github.com/adafruit/SD and click theZIP
download button, or click the link below
Download the SD Library Zip

Uncompress and rename the uncompressed folder SD. Check that the SD folder contains SD.cpp
and SD.h

Place the SD library folder your sketchbook libraries folder. You may need to create the libraries
subfolder if its your first library. For more details on how to install libraries, check out our ultra-
detailed tutorial at http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-all-about-arduino-libraries-install-use

Using the SD Library with the Mega and Leonardo

Because the Mega and Leonardo do not have the same hardware SPI pinout, you need to specify
which pins you will be using for SPI communication with the card. For the data logger shield,
these will be pins 10, 11, 12 and 13. Find the location in your sketch where SD.begin() is called
(like this):

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// see if the card is present and can be initialized:
if (!SD.begin(chipSelect)) {

and change it to add these pin numbers as follows:

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// see if the card is present and can be initialized:
if (!SD.begin(10, 11, 12, 13)) {

cardinfo

The cardinfo sketch uses a lower level library to talk directly to the card, so it calls card.init()
instead of SD.begin().

Light and Temperature Logger

Introduction

OK now that we have introduced both the RTC and the SD card and verified that they're
working, we can move onto logging!

We'll use a pretty good & detailed demonstration to show off the capabilities of this most
awesome data logging shield: We'll log both temperature and relative light levels to determine:

1.How much does the temperature in a fridge vary as the compressor turns on and off?

2.Does keeping the door open cause a big temperature drop? How long does it take for it to cool
down?
3.Does the light inside really turn off when the door is closed?

Build It!

Items you'll need:

 Arduino (of course!) a Atmega328 type is best - we always recommend going with an official
'classic' Arduino such as the Uno
 Adafruit data logger shield - assembled
 SD card formatted for FAT and tested using our example sketch
 CdS photocell and a matching 10K pulldown resistor
 Temperature sensor with analog out, such as TMP36
 Battery pack such as a 6-AA 'brick' and a 2.1mm DC jack
 or you can use a 9V clip for a power supply but a 9V powered logger will last only a couple hours
so we suggest 6xAA's
 Some 22 AWG wire, soldering iron, solder, etc.

You can get most everything in that list in a discounted pack in the Adafruit shop!

The sensors
We'll use two basic sensors to log data, a CdS photocell to track light (this will tell us when the
door has been opened) and a semiconductor temperature sensor to log the ambient fridge
temperature.

We have two great tutorials for these sensors on our site, if you haven't used them before or need
some refreshment, please read them now!

We will wire the sensors as shown in the diagram below.

Note that we connect ARef, the power pin of the temp sensor, and the light sensor to 3.3V not to
5.0V - we do this because the 5V line is very noisy and the 3.3V regulator is better filtered. In
the actual board we used the 3.3V line from the datalogger's regulator, see the images below - in
theory its the same as the one off of the Arduino but we trust ours more.
Wiring it up

The prototyping area on the board is a simple array of holes with soldering pads. The steps below
show how we built this circuit and illustrate some some basic circuit prototyping techniques. For
clarity, we will use the same color wire as shown in the circuit diagram above:
Position the sensors - The sensors could go anywhere on the prototyping area, but we chose this
arrangement to simplify connections between the components later on.

Prepare some jumpers - Measure a piece of wire (red) long enough to reach from the 3v
breakout hole to 1/2" past the temperature sensor. Strip about 3/4" from one end, and about 1/4"
from the other.

Measure another one (yellow) long enough to reach from the AREF pin to the hole between the
two sensors. Strip 1/2" from one end and 1/4" from the other.
Install the Jumpers - Place the jumpers as shown, with the long stripped ends nearest the sensors.

Since there are no signal traces between the holes in the prototyping area, we will use the long
stripped ends to join the legs of the components on the board.

Make the connections -

  Solder the first jumper (red) to the 3v hole.
 Bend the stripped end of the wire so it rests next to the legs of the light sensor, the temperature
sensor and the end of the AREF jumper.
 Fold the sensor legs and AREF jumper legs over the 3v jumper and solder to make the

connection.

Add more jumpers for the Sensors

 From Analog Pin 0 to the hole near the light sensor and resistor. (white)
 From GND to the hole next to the other end of the resistor (black)
 From the Analog pin 1 to the hole next to the center pin of the temperature sensor (green)
And also for the LEDs

 From L1 to Digital Pin 2 (yellow)

 From L2 to Digital Pin 3 (yellow)Solder and trim all connections
Using the same technique of folding the component legs over the jumper - make all connections
as shown in the wiring diagram.

Make sure that all connections are soldered. Also solder wires and component legs to the board
where they pass through the holes.

Prepare the Battery Pack

 Place the black plastic ferrule from the connector over the battery pack wires.
 Solder the red wire from the battery pack to the center pin
 Solder the the black wire to the outer barrel.
 Crimp to hold the wires securely
 Screw the black plastic ferrule on to cover the solder joints.
 Now your Light Temp Logger is wired and ready for testing!

Use It!

Sensor test

We'll now test the sensors, using this sketch which is a bit of a mashup of the two examples in
our tutorials

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/* Sensor test sketch
for more information see
http://www.ladyada.net/make/logshield/lighttemp.html
*/

#define aref_voltage 3.3 // we tie 3.3V to ARef and measure it with a

multimeter!

int photocellPin = 0; // the cell and 10K pulldown are connected to a0

int photocellReading; // the analog reading from the analog resistor
divider

//TMP36 Pin Variables

int tempPin = 1; //the analog pin the TMP36's Vout (sense) pin is
connected to
//the resolution is 10 mV / degree centigrade with a
//500 mV offset to allow for negative temperatures
int tempReading; // the analog reading from the sensor

void setup(void) {
// We'll send debugging information via the Serial monitor
Serial.begin(9600);

// If you want to set the aref to something other than 5v

analogReference(EXTERNAL);
}

void loop(void) {
photocellReading = analogRead(photocellPin);

Serial.print("Light reading = ");

Serial.print(photocellReading); // the raw analog reading

// We'll have a few threshholds, qualitatively determined

if (photocellReading < 10) {
Serial.println(" - Dark");
} else if (photocellReading < 200) {
Serial.println(" - Dim");
} else if (photocellReading < 500) {
Serial.println(" - Light");
} else if (photocellReading < 800) {
Serial.println(" - Bright");
} else {
Serial.println(" - Very bright");
}

tempReading = analogRead(tempPin);

Serial.print("Temp reading = ");

Serial.print(tempReading); // the raw analog reading

// converting that reading to voltage, which is based off the reference

voltage
float voltage = tempReading * aref_voltage / 1024;

// print out the voltage

Serial.print(" - ");
Serial.print(voltage); Serial.println(" volts");

// now print out the temperature

float temperatureC = (voltage - 0.5) * 100 ; //converting from 10 mv per
degree wit 500 mV offset
//to degrees ((volatge -
500mV) times 100)
Serial.print(temperatureC); Serial.println(" degrees C");

// now convert to Fahrenheight

float temperatureF = (temperatureC * 9 / 5) 32;
Serial.print(temperatureF); Serial.println(" degrees F");

delay(1000);
}
OK upload this sketch and check the Serial monitor again

Some recent versions of the IDE and SD library require that you explicitly include the SPI
library. If you get a compile error saying "'SPI' was not declared in this scope", simply add
"#include <SPI.h>" to the beginning of your sketch.

In my workroom, I got about 24 degrees C and a 'light measurement' of about 400 - remember
that while the temperature sensor gives an 'absolute' reading in C or F, the light sensor is not
precise and can only really give rough readings.

Once you've verified that the sensors are wired up correctly & running its time to get to the
logging!

Logging sketch

Download the light and temperature logging sketch from GitHub. Insert the SD card. Upload the
sketch to your Arduino. We'll now test it out while still 'tethered' to the computer
While the Arduno is still connected, blinking and powered, place your hand over the photocell
for a few seconds, then shine a flashlight on it. You should also squeeze the temp sensor with
your fingers to heat it up

Plotting with a spreadsheet

When you're ready to check out the data, unplug the Arduino and put the SD card into your
computer's card reader. You'll see a at least one and perhaps a couple files, one for each time the
logger ended up running

We'll open the most recent one. If you want to use the same logfile used in the graphing demos,
click here to download it.The quickest way to look at the data is using something like
OpenOffice or Excel, where you can open the .csv file and have it imported directly into the
spreadsheet

You can then perform some graphing by selecting the columns of data
Clicking the Chart button and using Lines (we think they are the best for such graphs)

Setting the First Column as label

Which will generate this graph

You can see pretty clearly how I shaded the sensor and then shone a flashlight on it.

You can make the graph display both with different axes (since the change in temperature is a
different set of units. Select the temp line (red), right-click and choose Format Data Series. In
the Options tab, Align data series to Secondary Y-axis.
Or you can make another graph with only the temp data

Now you can see clearly how I warmed up the sensor by holding it between my fingers

Using Gnuplot

Gnuplot is an free (but not open source?), ultra-powerful plotting program. Its also a real pain to
use! But if you can't afford a professional math/plotting package such as Mathematica or Matlab,
Gnuplot can do a lot!

We're not good enough to provide a full tutorial on gnuplot, here are a few links we found handy.
Google will definately help you find even more tutorials and links. Mucking about is the best
teacher, too!

 http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~vrable/gnuplot/using-gnuplot.html
 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-gnuplot/

We found the following commands executed in order will generate a nice graph of this data, be
sure to put LOGTEST.CSV in the same directory as wgnuplot.exe (or if you know how to
reference directories, you can put it elsewhere)
Copy Code
set xlabel "Time" # set the lower X-axis label to 'time'

set xtics rotate by -270 # have the time-marks on their side

set ylabel "Light level (qualitative)" # set the left Y-axis label

set ytics nomirror # tics only on left side

set y2label "Temperature in Fahrenheit" # set the right Y-axis label

set y2tics border # put tics no right side

set key box top left # legend box

set key box linestyle 0

set xdata time # the x-axis is time

set format x "%H:%M:%S" # display as time
set timefmt "%s" # but read in as 'unix timestamp'

plot "LOGTEST.CSV" using 2:4 with lines title "Light levels"

replot "LOGTEST.CSV" using 2:5 axes x1y2 with lines title "Temperature (F)"
Which makes this:
Note the cool double-sided y-axis scales! You can zoom in on stuff pretty easily too.

Other plotters

Our friend John also suggests Live-Graph as a free plotting program - we haven't tried it but its
worth looking at if you need to do a lot of plotting!

Portable logging

Of course, having a datalogger thats chained to a desktop computer isn't that handy. We can
make a portable logger with the addition of a battery pack. The cheapest way to get a good
amount of power is to use 6 AA batteries. I made one here with rechargables and a 6xAA battery
holder. It ran the Arduino logging once a second for 18.5 hours. If you use alkalines you could

easily get 24 hours or more.

Fridge logging

With my portable logger ready, its time to do some Fridge Loggin'! Both were placed in the
fridge, in the center of the middle shelf.

I placed it in around 10PM and then removed it around noon the next day. If you don't have a
fridge handy, you can grab the data from this zip file and use that.Here is the logged data:

You can see in the middle and end the temp and light levels are very high because the logger was
outside the fridge. The green line is the temperature so you can see the temperature slowly rising
and then the compressor kicking in every half hour or so. The red lines indicate when the door
was opened. This night was a more insominac one than normal!

Zooming into the plot at about 12:40AM, we can see how the temperature climbs whenever the
door is open, even in a few seconds it can climb 4 degrees very quickly!
Conclusion!

OK that was a detailed project but its a good one to test your datalogging abilities, especially
since its harder to fix bugs in the field. In general, we suggest trying other sensors and testing
them at home if possible. Its also a good idea to log more data than you need, and use a software
program to filter anything you dont need. For example, we dont use the VCC log but if you're
having strange sensor behavior, it may give you clues if your battery life is affecting it.

Code Walkthrough

Introduction

This is a walkthrough of the Light and Temperature Logging sketch. Its long and detailed so we
put it here for your perusal. We strongly suggest reading through it, the code is very versatile and
our text descriptions should make it clear why everything is there!

Download the complete file here:

Includes and Defines

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#include "SD.h"
#include &lt;Wire.h&gt;
#include "RTClib.h"

OK this is the top of the file, where we include the three libraries we'll use: the SD library to talk
to the card, the Wire library that helps the Arduino with i2c and the RTClib for chatting with the
real time clock

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// A simple data logger for the Arduino analog pins
#define LOG_INTERVAL 1000 // mills between entries
#define ECHO_TO_SERIAL 1 // echo data to serial port
#define WAIT_TO_START 0 // Wait for serial input in setup()

// the digital pins that connect to the LEDs

#define redLEDpin 3
#define greenLEDpin 4

// The analog pins that connect to the sensors

#define photocellPin 0 // analog 0
#define tempPin 1 // analog 1

Next are all the "defines" - the constants and tweakables.

 LOG_INTERVAL is how many milliseconds between sensor readings. 1000 is 1 second which is
not a bad starting point
  ECHO_TO_SERIAL determines whether to send the stuff thats being written to the card also out
to the Serial monitor. This makes the logger a little more sluggish and you may want the serial
monitor for other stuff. On the other hand, its hella useful. We'll set this to 1 to keep it on.
Setting it to 0 will turn it off
 WAIT_TO_START means that you have to send a character to the Arduino's Serial port to kick
start the logging. If you have this on you basically can't have it run away from the computer so
we'll keep it off (set to 0) for now. If you want to turn it on, set this to 1

The other defines are easier to understand, as they are just pin defines

 redLEDpin is whatever you connected to the Red LED on the logger shield
 greenLEDpin is whatever you connected to the Green LED on the logger shield
 photocellPin is the analog input that the CdS cell is wired to
 tempPin is the analog input that the TMP36 is wired to

Objects and error()

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RTC_DS1307 RTC; // define the Real Time Clock object

// for the data logging shield, we use digital pin 10 for the SD cs line
const int chipSelect = 10;

// the logging file

File logfile;

void error(char *str)

{
Serial.print("error: ");
Serial.println(str);

// red LED indicates error

digitalWrite(redLEDpin, HIGH);

while(1);
}

Next up we've got all the objects for the RTC, and the SD card chip select pin. For all our shields
we use pin 10 for SD card chip select lines but Ethernet shields use pin 4

Next is the error function, which is just a shortcut for us, we use it when something Really Bad
happened, like we couldn't write to the SD card or open it. It prints out the error to the Serial
Monitor, turns on the red error LED, and then sits in a while(1); loop forever, also known as a
halt

Setup

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void setup(void)
{
Serial.begin(9600);
Serial.println();

#if WAIT_TO_START
Serial.println("Type any character to start");
while (!Serial.available());
#endif //WAIT_TO_START

K now we are onto the code. We begin by initializing the Serial port at 9600 baud. If we set
WAIT_TO_START to anything but 0, the Arduino will wait until the user types something in.
Otherwise it goes ahead to the next part

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// initialize the SD card
Serial.print("Initializing SD card...");
// make sure that the default chip select pin is set to
// output, even if you don't use it:
pinMode(10, OUTPUT);

// see if the card is present and can be initialized:

if (!SD.begin(chipSelect)) {
Serial.println("Card failed, or not present");
// don't do anything more:
return;
}
Serial.println("card initialized.");

// create a new file

char filename[] = "LOGGER00.CSV";
for (uint8_t i = 0; i &lt; 100; i ) {
filename[6] = i/10 '0';
filename[7] = i  '0';
if (! SD.exists(filename)) {
// only open a new file if it doesn't exist
logfile = SD.open(filename, FILE_WRITE);
break; // leave the loop!
}
}

if (! logfile) {
error("couldnt create file");
}

Serial.print("Logging to: ");

Serial.println(filename);

Now the code starts to talk to the SD card, it tries to initialize the card and find a FAT16/FAT32
partition.

Next it will try to make a logfile. We do a little tricky thing here, we basically want the files to
be called something like LOGGERnn.csv where nn is a number. By starting out trying to create
LOGGER00.CSV and incrementing every time when the file already exists, until we get to
LOGGER99.csv, we basically make a new file every time the Arduino starts up

To create a file, we use some Unix style command flags which you can see in the logfile.open()
procedure. FILE_WRITE means to create the file and write data to it.

Assuming we managed to create a file successfully, we print out the name to the Serial port.

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Wire.begin();
if (!RTC.begin()) {
logfile.println("RTC failed");
#if ECHO_TO_SERIAL
Serial.println("RTC failed");
#endif //ECHO_TO_SERIAL
}

logfile.println("millis,time,light,temp");
#if ECHO_TO_SERIAL
Serial.println("millis,time,light,temp");
#if ECHO_TO_SERIAL// attempt to write out the header to the file
if (logfile.writeError || !logfile.sync()) {
error("write header");
}

pinMode(redLEDpin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(greenLEDpin, OUTPUT);

// If you want to set the aref to something other than 5v

//analogReference(EXTERNAL);
}

OK we're wrapping up here. Now we kick off the RTC by initializing the Wire library and
poking the RTC to see if its alive.

Then we print the header. The header is the first line of the file and helps your spreadsheet or
math program identify whats coming up next. The data is in CSV (comma separated value)
format so the header is too: "millis,time,light,temp" the first item millis is milliseconds since the
Arduino started, time is the time and date from the RTC, light is the data from the CdS cell and
temp is the temperature read.

You'll notice that right after each call to logfile.print() we have #if ECHO_TO_SERIAL and a
matching Serial.print() call followed by a #if ECHO_TO_SERIAL this is that debugging output
we mentioned earlier. The logfile.print() call is what writes data to our file on the SD card, it
works pretty much the same as the Serial version. If you set ECHO_TO_SERIAL to be 0 up top,
you won't see the written data printed to the Serial terminal.

Finally, we set the two LED pins to be outputs so we can use them to communicate with the user.
There is a commented-out line where we set the analog reference voltage. This code assumes that
you will be using the 'default' reference which is the VCC voltage for the chip - on a classic
Arduino this is 5.0V. You can get better precision sometimes by lowering the reference.
However we're going to keep this simple for now! Later on, you may want to experiment with it.

Main loop

Now we're onto the loop, the loop basically does the following over and over:

1.Wait until its time for the next reading (say once a second - depends on what we defined)

2.Ask for the current time and date froom the RTC

3.Log the time and date to the SD card

4.Read the photocell and temperature sensor

5.Log those readings to the SD card

6.Sync data to the card if its time

Timestamping

Lets look at the first section:

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void loop(void)
{
DateTime now;

// delay for the amount of time we want between readings

delay((LOG_INTERVAL -1) - (millis() % LOG_INTERVAL));

digitalWrite(greenLEDpin, HIGH);

// log milliseconds since starting

uint32_t m = millis();
logfile.print(m); // milliseconds since start
logfile.print(", ");
#if ECHO_TO_SERIAL
Serial.print(m); // milliseconds since start
Serial.print(", ");
#endif

// fetch the time

now = RTC.now();
// log time
logfile.print(now.get()); // seconds since 2000
logfile.print(", ");
logfile.print(now.year(), DEC);
logfile.print("/");
 logfile.print(now.month(), DEC);
logfile.print("/");
logfile.print(now.day(), DEC);
logfile.print(" ");
logfile.print(now.hour(), DEC);
logfile.print(":");
logfile.print(now.minute(), DEC);
logfile.print(":");
logfile.print(now.second(), DEC);
#if ECHO_TO_SERIAL
Serial.print(now.get()); // seconds since 2000
Serial.print(", ");
Serial.print(now.year(), DEC);
Serial.print("/");
Serial.print(now.month(), DEC);
Serial.print("/");
Serial.print(now.day(), DEC);
Serial.print(" ");
Serial.print(now.hour(), DEC);
Serial.print(":");
Serial.print(now.minute(), DEC);
Serial.print(":");
Serial.print(now.second(), DEC);
#endif //ECHO_TO_SERIAL

The first important thing is the delay() call, this is what makes the Arduino wait around until its
time to take another reading. If you recall we #defined the delay between readings to be 1000
millseconds (1 second). By having more delay between readings we can use less power and not
fill the card as fast. Its basically a tradeoff how often you want to read data but for basic long
term logging, taking data every second or so will result in plenty of data!

Then we turn the green LED on, this is useful to tell us that yes we're reading/writing data now.

Next we call millis() to get the 'time since arduino turned on' and log that to the card. It can be
handy to have - especially if you end up not using the RTC.

Then the familiar RTC.now() call to get a snapshot of the time. Once we have that, we write a
timestamp (seconods since 2000) as well as the date in YY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS time format
which can easily be recognized by a spreadsheet. We have both because the nice thing about a
timestamp is that its going to montonically increase and the nice thing about printed out date is
its human readable

Log sensor data

Next is the sensor logging code

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int photocellReading = analogRead(photocellPin);
delay(10);
int tempReading = analogRead(tempPin);
 // converting that reading to voltage, for 3.3v arduino use 3.3
float voltage = tempReading * 5.0 / 1024;
float temperatureC = (voltage - 0.5) * 100 ;
float temperatureF = (temperatureC * 9 / 5) 32;

logfile.print(", ");
logfile.print(photocellReading);
logfile.print(", ");
logfile.println(temperatureF);
#if ECHO_TO_SERIAL
Serial.print(", ");
Serial.print(photocellReading);
Serial.print(", ");
Serial.println(temperatureF);
#endif //ECHO_TO_SERIAL

digitalWrite(greenLEDpin, LOW);
}

This code is pretty straight forward, the processing code is snagged from our earlier tutorial.
Then we just print() it to the card with a comma seperating the two

We finish up by turning the green LED off