A couple of questions for a new project.

[GlassCurtain]

Hello all!

I'm new to programming in Excel. I do program in C, C++ and Java. I'm currently working on a project for a friend who wants to record humidity and temperature and store the data long term.

I have a humidity and temp sensor running into a micro-controller. From there, I'm dumping the data into excel using a data acquisition macro from Parallax.

My question is, what is the best to go about sorting this data once it's in Excel? We need to take the max and the min for the high's and low's each day. Can I program a workbook to make a new worksheet for each new day? Or would it just be easier dumping all the data into one worksheet with a time stamp and sort out high's and low's for the individual day that way?

Keep in mind we want to store years of this data as a sort of farmers almanac.

I'm not sure what all info you need about the project. I figured doing this in Excel would be easier since I can use the time stamp function to determine a new day. If I did this on the micro-controller I'd have to wire in a real time clock and manage it that way.

Sorry, one more thing. I'm currently polling temp and humidity every 10 mins which means it will use 288 cells per day. Is 288 cells a lot for a worksheet? If it is I can always poll the sensor slower...like every hour.

Sorry...lots of questions. Any info would be helpful!

Thank you!

 

[GopherUK]

I think you are probably best to have a single worksheet that contains all the dumped data, along with the timestamp.

Then have a second sheet that has a table for the different dates.

Have a look at this ("Beyond the basics with min if") to show you how to use conditional formulas to extract only data that is relevant to that date.

Finding MIN IF or MAX IF in Excel | Contextures Blog

 

[sergioMabres]

Although Excel can handle 1 million rows it is better to use one file per year just in case...

 

[GlassCurtain]

Thank you guys for the advice! I figured out today that the data acquisition macro I'm using has a feature where I can add the strings "date" and "time" to the head of my data and it will add a time stamp in the excel row before the temp and humidity.

Also, if I'm showing a graph of temperature while data is still dumping into the temperature column, will it show the new data on the graph in real time or will I have to re-graph the data every time?

Thanks again! I'm sure I'll have more questions the further I get into this project. Eventually I'm going to be adding other weather instruments such as wind speed/direction and a rain gauge.

 

[GopherUK]

T if I'm showing a graph of temperature while data is still dumping into the temperature column, will it show the new data on the graph in real time or will I have to re-graph the data every time?

I think you are probably best to use Excel's Table feature, which will update charts dynamically.

Creating Dynamic Excel Charts & Data Tables that Automatically Update. - YouTube