Flow and pressure averaging tutorial
Most Alicat devices have sensor response times <1 ms, making measurements susceptible to noise. This tutorial details how to change flow and pressure averaging to average out noise in readings.
Video tutorial
Video transcript
“Hello. My name is Michael Whiteside. I’m an Applications Engineer here at Alicat Scientific. In this video I’m going to be showing you how to use the averaging functionality on an Alicat device. Now let’s get started.”
In order to properly use the averaging functionality on an Alicat device, we will hit MENU (bottom right button), ADV SETUP (bottom middle button), SENSOR SETUP (top left button), and Averaging at the bottom here (bottom middle button).
What this averaging functionality does is it takes an average of all the instantaneous flow readings (or pressure readings) within a set period of time, and this period of time can be set between 1 and 255 ms.
We can change our pressure averaging (press top left PRESS AVG button) say to 100 (using UP, DOWN, and SELECT DIGIT buttons as needed). Press SET (bottom right button) to confirm this change. Flow averaging can be set to the maximum of 255. Just as an example, let’s set it to 256, and the device should come back with an error. And, yes, it does. “Value is out of range” is displayed on the screen. So, we will change that to 255.
And that is how you properly adjust averaging on your Alicat device.
Step-by-step instructions (front panel)
Pressure averaging
- Press the bottom right button for “MENU” selection.
- Press the bottom middle button for “ADV SETUP” selection.
- Press the top left button for “SENSOR SETUP” selection.
- Press the bottom middle button for “AVERAGING” selection.
- Press the top left button for “PRESS AVG” selection.
- Use the up, down, and select digit buttons to set your desired pressure averaging (1-255 ms).
- Press the bottom right button for “SET” selection.
Flow averaging
- Press the bottom right button for “MENU” selection.
- Press the bottom middle button for “ADV SETUP” selection.
- Press the top left button for “SENSOR SETUP” selection.
- Press the top right button for “FLOW AVG” selection.
- Use the up, down, and select digit buttons to set your desired flow averaging (1-255 ms).
- Press the bottom right button for “SET” selection.