What does it do?

Records sensor data versus elapsed time to the clipboard, in such a form that it can easily be pasted into Microsoft Excel for plotting.

 

How do I use it?

Typical usage is outlined below:

1. Press F8 to turn off power. Set up whatever conditions you want. Because the power is off, speed sensors will not have an immediate effect.
2. Give the sensor (in its box) that you want to record to the Excel bird. Again because power is off the tool will not start recording data.
3. Once you are sure everything is as you want it, press F8 to start recording sensor data to the clipboard.
4. Press F8 again to stop movement and data recording.
5. Now switch to Excel. Select the cell A1 and paste. You should get two columns of data pasted in. The first column (A) is time elapsed from when you started recording data (in seconds) - so the first cell should always be 0. The second column (B) is the value of the sensor you were recording at each corresponding time. To plot this, select both columns, click the chart wizard, select X/Y (scatter) as your chart type, and continue (select which type you want, label the axes and so on if you want). You will end up with a graph with time in seconds on X and the sensor value on Y. 
6. Now if you want to go back to ToonTalk and repeat the process etc, then make sure you suck up the existing Excel tool and take a new one from the notebook (so two things aren't trying to copy to the clipboard at once).

 

How does it work?

A few teams of robots are used. Essentially it records elapsed time by making use of the ToonTalk timer, and samples the value of the selected sensor each time. Some programming tricks to do with inserting tabs and newlines so the data will paste into Excel nicely.

 

What can I use it for?

Recording and plotting the value of a sensor over time. Especially useful for all kinds of motion, for example plotting the value of a position sensor (e.g. right) while setting and changing the corresponding speed sensor (right speed).