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Windmill is a suite of measurement and control software for Microsoft Windows. Using the universal Windmill LabIML driver, you can integrate many different types of laboratory instruments into one system.
Most instruments that have a serial port can be incorporated into a computerised data acquisition and control system. The system may involve many types of hardware. For example, a reading of weight from an electronic balance could be shown on the same real-time chart as a temperature reading.
You can plug your serial instruments straight into the built-in COM ports of your PC. However, if you have more instruments than COM ports, you may need an 8-port serial card. Four of these cards can be installed in one computer, and computers can be networked, giving easily expanded systems.
Windmill lets you use your PC to simulate, for example, chart recorders or data loggers. No programming is required: all the Windmill applications are ready-to-run. The choice of applications includes logging, charting, process mimics, alarm monitoring and sequence control. Dynamic data exchange means Windmill can automatically pass data to other off-the-shelf Windows programs (such as Excel), for analysis and presentation, as the data is collected. In addition to RS232 instruments, Windmill can integrate Ethernet, GPIB, Modbus, RS485 and ISA-bus cards into one system.
Windmill with the LabIML driver costs 375 British pounds (545 Euros). You may not need Windmill's logging and charting facilities, wanting to use your existing software to collect and process data from your instruments. In this case the IML Toolkit, which offers fewer Windmill programs, is available for £195 (290 Euros).
You can download a demonstration copy of Windmill. Select wmldemo.exe and save to disk, or see the Windmill demo page for more details.
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