                        DATAVIEW 1.1

     This document describes the operation of DATAVIEW, a program
for downloading and displaying the data from ADEPT ROCKETRY's
recording altimeters and on-board computers. An altimeter to PC
cable is required to download - part number CABPCD1. Adept also
supplies download software with the purchase of the cable, however,
this software does not allow header and comment information to be
included in the data file. These files use a .dat extension and can
be read by DATAVIEW. When a file without header information is 
opened, DATAVIEW will prompt the user for the header - rocket name,
date launched and motors used. The file can then be saved using
SAVE AS and the header information will be included in the new
file. The new file will use the standard DATAVIEW extension, .dtv.
The comment line (a one line description of the flight) cannot be
entered unless the data was downloaded using DATAVIEW. DATAVIEW
will open files having a .dat, .edt, or .dtv extension. The .dtv
extension is now standard.
     At start-up, 5 menu titles are displayed. These are: FILE,
DISPLAY, DATA, DOWNLOAD and ABOUT. Each of the menu titles produce
a pull down menu containing a number of functions relating to that
title. Each menu function is described below. The FILE and DOWNLOAD
menu titles have a HELP function under them for additional
assistance.

     The menu items and their functions are as follows (keyboard
shortcuts are shown below each item that has a shortcut):

FILE

     OPEN      causes a standard Windows Open box to be presented.
   (CTRL-O)    Select drive and directory (and sub-directory if
               needed) to display the data files. Data files having
               a .dat, .edt, and .dtv extensions will be displayed.
               Highlight the file to be displayed by clicking on it
               with the left mouse button then select OK.
 
               If the file does not contain the required header,
               you will be asked if you wish to enter a header.
               Selecting "No" will cause "no data" to be displayed
               for all header information. Selecting "Yes" will
               allow you to enter rocket name (30 chars maximum,
               only first 15 displayed), date launched (30 chars
               maximum, first 8 displayed: DD/MM/YY), and motors
               used (30 chars maximum, 30 displayed). After 
               entering the header, you will be asked if you wish
               to save the new file, which now contains the 
               header. Selecting "Yes" will cause a standard 
               Windows "Save As" dialog box to appear. Enter the
               new file name, with the .dtv extension.

               If the file contains a 48 second download, you will
               be given the option of displaying the first 24 seconds
               only. Most of the interesting data is in the first
               24 seconds and selecting "YES" will cause better
               resolution of the first 24 seconds.
               
               The downloaded data always contains one, and 
               occasionally several, leading zeros. These zeros
               at the beginning of the data are removed so that the
               first data point, indicating the altitude at 
               0.1 second, will not be zero. Removing these initial
               zeros means that the altitude data will not show
               24 (or 48) seconds of data. It will show 24 (or 48)
               minus the number of leading zeros removed. Usually
               you will see 23.9 (or 47.9) seconds as the last
               point but there may be one or two less.

               At this point, all the menu items under DISPLAY and
               DATA will be enabled, except EDIT. EDIT requires
               the cursor to be enabled (see EDIT below).

     SAVE AS   Allows the data on the screen to be saved. Any 
               header information that was entered when the file
               was opened is also saved. A standard Windows "SAVE
               AS" screen will be presented and the file can be
               saved under the original filename or any other
               filename. SAVE AS is used to save the data after
               editing out bad data points. Use caution when
               saving the data under the same filename - the
               original data WILL BE REPLACED. If at some time in
               the future you wish you had the original, unedited
               data back...it is gone forever (unless it is still
               in the memory chip).

               If only the first 24 seconds of a 48 second file are
               input (answering "Yes" to "First 24 seconds only"),
               SAVE AS will only save the first 24 seconds. If you
               want your edited file to contain all 48 seconds, you
               MUST BRING IN ALL 48 seconds when you open the file.

     PRINT     Causes the current display on the screen to be
   (CTRL-P)    sent to the printer.

     PRINTER SETUP   Causes a standard Windows Printer Setup screen
               to be displayed. Print quality, size, and orientation
               are among the items that can be selected from this
               screen.

     EXIT      Ends the program.

DISPLAY

     ALTITUDE  Causes the altitude plot to be displayed. Any leading
     (CTRL-A)  zeros are removed so that the first point, at 0.1
               second, is non-zero. Maximum altitude is displayed
               on the first line of the header.

     VELOCITY  Causes the velocity curve to be displayed. Units
     (CTRL-V)  are feet/second with the peak velocity displayed on
               the first line of the header. Each velocity point
               is determined using a .4 second window, meaning
               the velocity at point x is determined by averaging
               the velocity at x - .2 second and the velocity and
               x + .2 second. The resulting data is then slightly
               smoothed to remove the multiple of 9 bias created
               by the altimeter. The last second of velocity is
               not displayed.

     ACCEL.    Displays the acceleration curve. Units are feet/
    (CTRL-L)   second/second with the peak G loading displayed
               on the first line of the header. Remember, one G
               is 32 feet/sec/sec so an acceleration of 320 feet/
               sec/sec is 10 Gs. Since acceleration is determined
               by differentiating velocity, a noisy velocity plot
               will produce a noisy acceleration plot whereas a
               smooth velocity plot will produce a smooth 
               acceleration plot. The velocity plot tends to be
               noisy right after passing zero velocity when the
               apogee charge blows and the rocket is bouncing on
               the shock cord. This produces extremely noisy
               acceleration points. Therefore, DATAVIEW does
               automatic smoothing of the acceleration plot after
               the point where the cooresponding velocity went to
               zero. This auto-smoothing is very gentle, bringing
               the RMS down to a level consistent with the rest of
               the plot. It produces a cleaner plot after apogee.
               Auto-smoothing effects the acceleration plot only,
               and only after apogee.

     COMMENTS  Displays the one line comment associated with the
               file. If the file has no comment line, the COMMENTS
               option will be grayed out and cannot be selected.
               The comment line is entered when a file is downloaded
               using DATAVIEW.

     CURSOR    Toggles the cursor on and off. When turned on, the
    (CTRL-C)   cursor appears as a thin, vertical line under the 
               point at 12.0 seconds. The cursor is referencing 
               the point immediately above it. The value of the
               point being pointed to by the cursor, along with
               it's units (feet, feet/sec, etc.) is displayed on
               the second line of the header, after motors. The
               time of this point, in seconds after launch, is
               also displayed. When the cursor is turned on, the
               time will show 12.0 seconds and the value will show
               the altitude, velocity, or acceleration at the 12.0
               second point. The value displayed will be from
               whatever plot is being displayed (if the altitude
               plot is up, altitude values will be displayed).

               Moving the cursor left or right along the plot is
               done using the mouse or keyboard. To use the mouse,
               set the mouse pointer at the desired position on
               the plot and click the left button. The cursor will
               move to that position. For exact positioning, use
               the keyboard. The left arrow key causes the cursor to 
               move left and the right arrow key causes the cursor
               to move to the right (how about that!).
               The keys can be held down for rapid movement or hit
               one at a time for point by point movement.  

               The cursor time position, in seconds, remains fixed
               while other plots are selected. This means, for
               example, that velocity can be displayed and the
               cursor moved to peak velocity. Then, altitude can
               be selected and the altitude at that point, where
               peak velocity occurred, will be displayed. This
               technique, identifying points of interest on the
               velocity plot and then moving to the altitude plot
               to determine altitudes where these points occurred,
               allows staging altitudes to be determined, peak
               stage velocity and altitudes to be determined,
               airstart altitudes, etc. A very useful technique.

DATA

     CLEAN     Attempts to remove bad data points from the altitude
     (F2)      data. Clean is not a smoothing routine, it does not
               average a point with it's neighbors to produce a
               smoother plot. Clean uses a predictive routine - it
               looks at the previous points and predicts where the
               next point should be. If the next point is radically
               different from the predicted point, the value of the
               predicted point is substituted. Clean works very 
               well for high speed ejections which tend to produce
               noise spikes which causes the scaling on the altitude
               plot to be in error and trashes the velocity and
               acceleration plots.

               Since Clean is a predictive routine, it can go wildly
               in error if a number of consecutive points (one half
               second) deviate from the rest of the surrounding 
               data. For example, if during the descent the data
               starts to indicate an ascent, Clean will expect all
               further points to continue this ascent. Since they
               will not, Clean will change them to predicted values.
               Thus, you will see your rocket start to go back up
               again. To solve this problem, each time Clean 
               finishes a pass which resulted in data being changed,
               it will ask the user if the data looks better.
               Selecting "No" will put the old data back, expand
               the noise tolerance, and try again. Keep trying
               until the noise spikes are removed and the rest of
               the data is unchanged. If no points were changed,
               the "Does the data look better?" question will not
               be asked since no changes were made.

               Note that none of the data modification commands
               (CLEAN, SMOOTH, EDIT) change the original data file.
               If they produce acceptable results, the data can be              
               saved with the SAVE AS command. If they produce
               unacceptable results, simply select RESTORE (below)
               and the original data will again be displayed. All
               the data modificiation commands work on the altitude
               data only. If altitude is not displayed when they
               are selected, DATAVIEW will automatically display
               altitude when they are selected.

               Since the velocity and acceleration plots are computed
               from the displayed altitude plot, cleaning up the
               altitude plot will produce much better looking
               velocity and acceleration plots.

               Clean cannot help really messy, noisy, plots (try
               SMOOTH instead). It works best with noise spikes that
               are only 1 or 2 points wide. However, since it does
               not change the original data, try it. It may help.
 
     SMOOTH    Smooths the altitude data. Uses a 3 point averaging
      (F3)     routine to produce smoother looking data. Each time
               SMOOTH is selected, or F3 (the keyboard shortcut) is
               hit, one round of smoothing is applied. Usually, 1
               or 2 rounds is enough. If the results are not satis-
               factory, select RESTORE (or hit F5) and the original
               data will be displayed. Note that each round of SMOOTH
               will cause the peak velocity to decrease slightly
               since maximum altitude is being averaged down.

               For noisy data with a big noise spike, select CLEAN
               first. Clean will remove the spike and then the data
               can be smoothed. Selecting SMOOTH first will skew
               the data towards the noise spike.

     EDIT      Allows points to be manually positioned. This is your
     (F4)      last resort if CLEAN or SMOOTH cannot remove bad
               points from your data. Since EDIT uses the cursor,
               the cursor must be enabled to enable EDIT. To edit
               a point (or points), first ensure the cursor is active
               and then select EDIT (F4 shortcut). Position the 
               cursor under the point to be edited, then use the
               up and down arrow keys to move the point to the
               desired location. The original point will disappear
               and the edited point will appear green. The keys
               can be held down for rapid movement. After moving the
               point to the desired location, move the cursor to 
               the next point to be edited, using either the left
               and right arrow keys or the mouse. When all editing
               is complete, turn EDIT mode off (hit F4 again) and
               the display will be updated (scaling, max altitude,
               removing green points, etc). A red warning label will
               be displayed whenever EDIT is active. This is to
               remind the user to turn EDIT off when editing is
               complete. The EDIT menu item (or the F4 shortcut)
               toggles EDIT on and off.

               Editing works only on the altitude plot. Velocity
               and acceleration are disabled while EDIT is selected.
               However, editing the altitude plot will certainly
               have an effect on the velocity and acceleration
               plots. They can be viewed when editing is complete.

               After successful editing, don't forget to save the
               edited data using the SAVE AS command.

     RESTORE   Restores the original altitude data from the last
               file opened. This is useful if one of the data
               modification commands produces an unexpected result.
               Whenever a file is opened, a copy of the data input
               from that file is saved in memory. RESTORE causes
               that unmodified copy of the data to be displayed.

Downloading is built into DATAVIEW. It is, however, a separate .exe
file, named download.exe (included in dataview.zip). This was
necessary because the download program is a Qbasic program (yes,
Qbasic can do things Visual Basic cannot). When you execute the
DOWNLOAD command from DATAVIEW, it "chains" (actually issues a DOS
shell command) to download.exe, does the download, and then returns
to DATAVIEW. Since the download program is separate, DATAVIEW needs
to know where it is, since it may be in a a directory different from
DATAVIEW.

DOWNLOAD

     SET PATH  Allows the user to indicate where download.exe, the
               download program, resides. A standard Windows Open
               screen will be presented, which is used to set the
               path to download.exe. Once it has been located and
               highlighted (click the filename with the mouse to
               highlight it), hit OK. Once the path has been set,
               the DOWNLOAD option (under the DOWNLOAD menu item) will
               be enabled. Hit CANCEL to exit SET PATH without
               specifying the location of download.exe.

     DOWNLOAD  Causes the download program, download.exe, to be
               executed. This option is disabled (grayed out) until
               SET PATH has been executed and download.exe highlighted.
               Download.exe is a DOS program. To download, start the
               altimeter in dump mode then select this DOWNLOAD option
               and follow screen instructions. The data will be
               displayed on the screen as it is downloaded. You should
               watch the data as it appears on the screen to insure it
               is logical. Occasionally, due to syncing between the 
               computer and the altimeter, a bit will be dropped. This
               will cause the data to look wildly in error...huge
               numbers, negative numbers, something like that. At the
               end of the dump, Download will ask if the data looks 
               okay. Entering "n" (no) will cause download to slow
               down it's timing and recycle to try again.

               If the data looks good (answer "y" (yes) to above
               question), the user will be prompted for rocket name,
               date, motors used and a one line comment. DO NOT USE
               COMMAS!

Other Download information: There is no separate manual for download
since it is self-explanatory. Just a few comments - you will initially
be asked how many seconds to download. Acceptable values are 24 or 48.
Entering 0 will exit download and return to Dataview. You will then
be instructed to connect the altimeter to the printer (parallel) port.
After doing this, you will be instructed to start the altimeter in
dump mode. Remember, power up the altimeter while holding down the
acceleration switch to enter dump mode. This will cause the altimeter
to beep out the altitude. Release the acceleration switch while the
altitude is being beeped out. After beeping is complete, hit enter
to initiate the download. If four seconds go by without receiving any
data, download will abort back to dataview.

    After a good download, you will be given the current directory
and asked where to place the data. Enter the complete path, i.e.
c:\rocket. The contents of that directory will then be displayed,
and you can input the filename to save to. Header and comment
information can then be input. When complete, you will be taken back
to Dataview.
                

