ABE-VIEW: Android Interface for Wireless Data Acquisition and Control

Advances in scientific knowledge are increasingly supported by a growing community of developers freely sharing new hardware and software tools. In this spirit we have developed a free Android app, ABE-VIEW, that provides a flexible graphical user interface (GUI) populated entirely from a remote instrument by ascii-coded instructions communicated wirelessly over Bluetooth. Options include an interactive chart for plotting data in real time, up to 16 data fields, and virtual controls including buttons, numerical controls with user-defined range and resolution, and radio buttons which the user can use to send coded instructions back to the instrument. Data can be recorded into comma delimited files interactively at the user’s discretion. Our original objective of the project was to make data acquisition and control for undergraduate engineering labs more modular and affordable, but we have also found that the tool is highly useful for rapidly testing novel sensor systems for iterative improvement. Here we document the operation of the app and syntax for communicating with it. We also illustrate its application in undergraduate engineering labs on dynamic systems modeling, as well as for identifying the source of harmonic distortion affecting electrochemical impedance measurements at certain frequencies in a novel wireless potentiostat.