Software for analysing relative humidity and temperature data

Cihat Uzun <objectconservation [at] yahoo__com> writes

>We need relative humidity and temperature analysis software
>(freeware). We use tinytag dataloggers in our museum and its
>analysis is very limited. We especially want scatter diagram safety
>area.

The software provided by most data logger suppliers tends to be
linear recording rather than providing true analysis. That is they
provide, in electronic form, the same format as that obtained by a
paper THG graph. Some provide for high and low alarms but few offer
true analysis. Those that do tend to limit this to their own loggers
and none of these are free except where provided upon purchase of
the logger.

Golden Software provides free evaluation of their products and I can
highly recommend SURFER and GRAPHER for providing true analysis, and
in particular I find it useful when wanting to establish a
relationship between 2 or 3 environmental factors. I routinely use
Surfer to compare Wind speed v. Wind direction v. rain amount, for
outdoor climatic studies. Golden also make Voxler to compare data in
4 dimensions (the fourth being shading of the the 3D model.
Professionally I have yet to enter the fifth dimension). This is all
provided free in Demo mode but the only features disabled are SAVE
and maybe PRINT. Your keyboard comes with an unlock key called
Printscreen allowing transfer to image editing software for final
manipulation and saving. I am sure if this were immoral the company
would impose tighter limits. To be able to analyse with this
software the Tinytag needs to be able to generate a readable file
(txt or asc) that can be imported into Excel or similar. Look for an
Excel readable feature in the menus as well. If you have EXCEL you
can also do quite a bit with that. Excel (is particularly good using
the Autoformat cell feature for quickly visualizing values outside
the defined boundaries, such as all temps below zero etc. This is
used to assess freeze thaw potential in my case. In your situation
you can set an upper and lower boundary to illustrate at a glance,
the old 55 +/- 5 chestnut

I have used EXCEL to generate all sorts of scatter data and that is
where most logger software fails. It can only plot x against linear
time whereas scatter plots need to be able to plot x against y where
y is the variable of relevance. I have some examples of this use of
scatter plots in an article Thorn, A. 2008 Vibration impact: methods
and results of some recent studies. in the Delhi ICOM-CC
publication. One I recall is comparing vibration magnitude with time
of day to establish a clear pattern of impact from peak tram traffic
past the site. That plot presented vibration magnitude v. time of
day, rather than just a linear trace revealing no pattern at all.

Getting ascii data into columns requires a little patience, it may
require going through Word to have Excel recognize column breaks to
be able to place the data into correct column format. Sounds
complicated I know but once mastered I find it a soothing routine.
Golden Software is top flight hardcore processing and I would
strongly recommend it. The learning curve is steep but the fee lunch
at the top is very nourishing. Get back to me if you want further
discussion on this.

Andrew Thorn
ARTCARE
614-1926-9326
613-9326-9326


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 24:18
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