CHAPTER
8 Using a Laptop for Intermittent Problems
O
ne of the first troubleshooting steps is confirming or denying the existence of a
problem, and one of the most difficult troubleshooting challenges is the intermit-
tent problem. You know—the problem that doesn’t show up when you want it to.
The troubleshooting process also requires that you understand the conditions under
which the problem occurs. Unfortunately, at today’s labor rates it is totally impractical to
achieve these goals in many cases. Who wants to pay a technician hundreds of dollars just
to sit around waiting for a problem to occur? And few boatowners have the time to con-
duct extensive in-use testing with the sole objective of waiting for an intermittent problem
to recur.
One way to deal with this situation is to let your equipment do the sitting around for
you, gathering data that you can analyze later. Sometimes environmental conditions trig-
ger intermittent electrical problems and often these conditions can be duplicated as part
of a sea trial. Simply attach data-logging equipment to the circuit(s) in question and put
the boat through a sea trial, running the boat’s systems through their normal operational
cycles while the data-logging equipment does its work. Keep a log during the sea trial, not-
ing sea conditions, wind velocity, engine rpm, boat speed, precipitation, and even temper-
atures in the area of the meter at given times throughout the test. This will enable you to
later match the environmental conditions to the data-log time stamp on your laptop as an
aid to analysis of the data. After the sea trial, check the measurements and key them to
events during the sea trial.Laptop Link-Ups
Like so much of the equipment discussed in this book, the microchip is the driving force
behind the data-logging capabilities of just about any piece of high-end electrical measur-
ing equipment you are likely to buy today. The software involved is not complex, so it
doesn’t need the latest and greatest in a PC or laptop. I use an otherwise outmoded PC as
my platform for data logging.
Typically, a PC that is at least Windows 95 compatible will suffice. You won’t need
much storage either, as all the logging programs I’m familiar with are essentially text based
and don’t require a huge hard drive or lots of memory.Copyright © 2007 by Edwin R. Sherman. Click here for terms of use.