Recent software improvements in moisture (TDR method), matric pressure, electrical conductivity and temperature meters of porous media

摘要

The FOM/mts (Field Operated Meter of moisture, temperature and salinity of soils) and TDR/MUX/mpts (Time Domain Reflectometry meter with a multiplexer for measurement of moisture, matric pressure, temperature and salinity of soils) are measurement devices developed and manufactured in the Institute of Agrophysics Polish Academy of Sciences (IA PAS), Lublin, Poland. They are recently redesigned to increase the functionality, accuracy and to provide user friendly way of operation. The main improvementsare as follows: - ability to connect the devices to PC compatible computer by a standard USB link using the universal program 'ET USB Communicator; - identification of the devices by unique serial numbers, - device firmware upgrade by means of running aprovided program on the PC computer connected to the device, - individual probe calibration, - ability to connect a number of additional temperature (LP/t -Laboratory Probe for soil temperature measurement) and matric pressure (LP/p - Laboratory Probe for soil matric pressure measurement) using the auxiliary input (applies to TDR/MUX/mpts), - probe type selection (choice between laboratory LP/ms or field FP/mts probes) in the TDR channel. Also the description of universal MIDL (Multi Interface Data Logger) data logger that can control the TDR/MUX/mpts devices is presented.