Connecting and Setting up CT25K:
To turn ON:
Connect one end of power cable to J2 which is located underneath the device and connect other end to a power outlet . Use the key to open the door of the ceilometer and in this order, turn on the equipment power switch, the window conditioner switch, and the battery switch. The ceilometers will undergo a startup routine in which the LEDs will blink but after a few minutes the PWR OK LED should turn on and remain on. In the case that the RESET LED turns on and remains on instead of the other LEDs, this is a signal that the outlet you are using is faulty (there are many of these in the lab). Simply plug the ceilometers into a different outlet and see if the other LEDs will blink when you switch on the device.
To connect to Laptop:
Connect one end the serial cable to J4 which is located underneath the device and the other end to the VLINX switch. A virtual COM port has been set up with the HP laptop in the lab and is assigned to port 14. Below are the settings for the server.
The VLINX server itself is connected to one of the numbered ports of the LINKSYS router. The laptop is connected to one of the other numbered ports as well.
VLINX IP: 192.168.0.1
Laptop IP: 192.168.0.3
Open up CT – VIEW to communicate with device and take measurements.
CT – VIEW
Before starting, double – check
File -> Port Settings
These are the settings I assigned in compliance with pg 17 of the manual.
To communicate with the device
Terminal -> Open…
Click the encircled button to connect to the Ceilometer. This is the button you click to connect to the ceilometer so you can communicate and take measurements with it.
Type “open” and hit ENTER to begin communication with the ceilometer. You can type this word and hit ENTER at any time even when the ceilometers is collecting data.
Pg. 28 – 32 is a list of commands that you can use to communicate with the ceilometers. Some commands consists for multiple words or levels. For example, in the picture above, placing the ceilometers in STANDBY is a 3 level command. To finish communications with the ceilometers, simply type in CLOSED and hit ENTER.
To view sky condition:
In the main screen, there should be a picture of a cloud to pull up the sky condition window.
It should look like this:
The first column denotes cloud heights. The 2nd column denotes sky conditions for various cloud layers and the 3rd column denotes cloud heights for various cloud layers.
One important thing to note is that although the first column may have cloud height measurements as soon as the device is turned on, the encircled box will initially have a reading of 99 meaning “Not enough data” for the first 25 minutes of operation.
Data
Data is stored in the CT-VIEW folder which can be accessed through the Program Files folder.
An explanation of the data is in the manual on Pg 33 – 42.