When sensor readings are taken in a noisy or vibrating environment, it may be desirable to average the sensor readings to produce a smoother output. Depending on the data update on your particular PC and how fast you want to see it update in the software you can set parameters to optimize response time & get the highest signal to noise ratio. All Loadstar software provide an averaging option which can be selected by clicking Sensor, Filter Sensors..and selecting an average or median option.

When setting up a new filter, you can specify the number of points to average and a threshold value and give the filter a name to easily identify it.

Window Size?

Let us say you are getting 100 data points per second and you'd be ok with averaging 21 data points to minimize noise, you can set the Window size as 21. For median filter this number MUST be an odd number.  If you want the highest accuracy and you are willing to wait a second, then use 99 as the window size. Try out different values and how slow the resulting responsiveness is and adjust this number accordingly.

What is threshold value?

The "threshold" value indicates a change in load (or other measurement) value above which the software will stop averaging and jump to the new value. This threshold is specified in lb or kg or whatever unit is currently set for the sensor.

You may want to average the reading of a sensor if you have an especially noisy or vibrating environment and you want to 'smooth' the readings. However any averaging will also slow down the response rate, and higher the number of points averaged the slower the response. This will especially be noticeable if the load is slowly varying (or cycling) - the readings will take some time to catch up to the actual load or before they catch up the load might have changed significantly.

This can be mitigated by setting a 'jump' threshold value of, say, 1% of load cell capacity. A recommended value is 0.1% of capacity, for example, 0.1 lb for a 100 lb load cell. When such a threshold value is specified, as soon as a change in load above this threshold is detected, it will be assumed that there is a real change in load, not just sensor or other environmental noise. The software will then stop averaging, jump to the new value, and then start averaging again. This will result in a much improved response rate while at the same reducing the noise when the load is more or less stable.

When there is more than one sensor, averaging can be set individually per sensor, depending on each sensor capacity. By default the jump threshold is set to a very high value so that the software is always averaging. Note that if the threshold is set to 0, no averaging will be performed as any change will result in a jump to the new value.

Once you setup the filter and give it a name, you can then Display it, Log it or Plot it as if it is another Sensor! You can click on Cascade or Tile icon to find all available "sensors" to pick from to display on screen and then arrange them in the order, size and location you wish. Remember to click on Save Display View to Save this View. The next time you start LoadVUE Pro, SensorVUE or ControlVUE it will come into this view automatically. For using Filter values in Plots, right click on the plot and select the named sensor that you just created in the Average/Median filter setup screen.