SmartSoft Application Software

It means the PC being used is not able to handle the data at the selected speed - there are a few things that can be done to improve the data capturing:

1) In the Instrument Set Up panel > Acquisition Rate tab, configure the number of Channels and FBGs/Channel that are actually connected. If you leave it as the defaults (4 Channels and 16 FBGs) then the interrogator will pad the data messages with zeroes.

2) If just wavelengths are being logging then Basic Acquisition could be used. SmartSoft will perform less processing than in Enhanced Acquisition because it doesn't need to check the coefficients set up in the Sensors table.

3) Use a PC with higher processing power. It can be tricky to assess but generally the faster the processor and the newer the processor technology the better.

Please Email Technical Support or call +44 1344 484111 if you need more help on this point.

Yes, SmartSoft software has the functionality for the user to set both the scan rate and averaging rate. This will reduce the number of data points being logged to file.

Yes, the scan rate is user definable in the SmartSoft software. Table below gives an indication of the scan rates available:

SmartScan can synchronise to a NTP time signal via its Ethernet port. 

In this scenario SmartScan would need to be connected on a Local Area Network (LAN) and would also need to be able to access an NTP server, either on the same LAN or over the Internet.

All the data from SmartScan is time stamped, so if an NTP signal is received the timestamps would be synchronised to that signal. See “Plug-in for NTP synchronisation” in the SmartSoft user manual.

There are three ways:

• Smart Fibres can provide an executable app which runs with the LV8 RTE.
• Use a website conversion tool like: http://www.epochconverter.com/
• Work it out with a calculator, don’t forget to count leap days!

No on-board averaging is done. Averaging is done in SmartSoft on the PC connected to the instrument.

Our SmartSoft software logs the data to a text file. The SmartSoft allows the user to log the SI engineering units (kPa, bar, °C, °F, µε) or FBG wavelengths (nm).

All data from SmartScan is transmitted with a Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) time stamp. The SmartScan’s UTC time is synchronised with the host PC’s clock every time SmartSoft connects to the interrogator. Therefore SmartScan data can be synchronised with time stamped data from other measurement systems.

There are four options for customising the SmartSoft interface software of our instruments:

Option 1) Write your own LabVIEW plug-in

Option 2) Write your own custom LabVIEW interface

Option 3) Write your own custom interface in another programming language

Option 4) Request Smart Fibres to customise SmartSoft to your specific requirements

Email Technical Support or call +44 1344 484111 for more information.

Generally speaking the faster the processor speed and the newer the processor technology the more likely it is to cope with the speed of data. Nearly all new off-the-shelf laptops and desktops would be fast enough, and these typically have an i3 with a processor speed of 2 GHz or better. Older desktops with Intel Duo ~3 GHz processors are also fast enough.

All of our interrogators are supplied with our standard SmartSoft suite of LabVIEW based applications.

For further information about SmartSoft please visit our SmartSoft Software Product Page via the below link.

For options about customising the software, please refer to our further FAQ below.

No. The USB is not active on SmartScope.

Yes, any SmartScan interrogator can initially be configured with a PC and then disconnected to log the measurement data to a USB solid state storage device or, in the case of SmartScan Aero Mini, it's onboard flash memory.

Yes, the time can be set manually using the web browser interface, instructions in section 2.5 of the Manual Addendum for On-board Storage that is included on the disc.

For data transmission we can offer Ethernet, CANopen, Modbus/TCP, Modbus/RTU and Profibus DP but not all are available on all our interrogator models.

Please note that some communications protocols will limit the acquisition rates of the instrument, e.g., CANopen is up to 250Hz.