Getting and Running the Application

Spring 2016 Hardware Release Notes

Please read if you just purchased a device


Windows Software

 IOLab_win32_1.63.1447.zip

Extract the IOLab... folder from the ZIP file. Enter the folder and double-click on the IOLab.exe application (look here for more details). Requires Windows 7 or higher.

If you run into problems because Norton Anti-Virus is quarantining your IOLab application, please look here.



Mac Software

 IOLab_macosx_1.63.1447.zip

Extract the IOLab... folder from the ZIP file. Double-click on the IOLab.app application (look here for more details). Requires OSX 10.9 or higher.



Python Development (for experts)

PyOLab Release v0.2.0

This is a Python library that enables primitive stand-alone communication with IOLab. It is NOT designed to replace the highly capable application you can download for Windows and Mac at the above links, but rather to enable interested people to play with the guts of the IOLab system at a programming level. To get involved with further development of this fun python resource, check out the PyOLab GitHub repository. When you have questions or comments please send me an email at mats.selen@gmail.com.

Selected Release Notes


  • 1.63.1447 (June/20/2017):
    Fix to output config code to make the setting of D6 and DAC more robust.
  • 1.62.1445 (June/5/2017):
    Lesson player bug-fix.
  • 1.62.1443 (May/16/2017):
    Data smoothing now done during acquisition.
  • 1.60.1429 (Apr/4/2017):
    ADC reference set to 3.3V for A7, A8, A9 whenever possible.
  • 1.60.1426 (Mar/28/2017):
    You can now calibrate without resetting first. Added DAC output control.
  • 1.59.1418 (Jan/24/2017):
    Misc. improvements, mostly for experts.
  • 1.57.1399 (Nov/23/2016):
    Added ability to let students select sensors within the Lesson Player.


Quick Start Guide


  1. Plug in the dongle and turn on the IOLab device.
  2. Start the application as described above (slightly different for Mac & PC).
  3. Select the sensors you want to read out from the list on the left - the system readout will be optimized for the selected sensors and charts to display the data from the selected sensors will created.
  4. Click on the Record button to start data acquisition, and click on the Stop button to stop.
  5. The Data Smoothing button selects how many points are included in the smoothing average.

IOLab device


Calibrating Your Sensors


It is important to calibrate your devices force probe and accelerometer. Click the reset button twice, then select the sensor to calibrate from the tools menu:


Restoring & Saving Your Data



Each time data is acquired it is automatically saved to the Documents/IOLab-WorkFiles/rawdata folder on your local computer. You can restore any previous acquisition by clicking on the file icon and selecting the data you want.


You can export the data from any chart to a CSV (Excel) file by clicking on the export icon. The data is saved to the Documents/IOLab-WorkFiles/export folder on your local computer.




Navigating Your Plots



When the "graph" icon is selected (the default), the mouse is used to select regions for analysis. Left-click and dragging will select a region the region (shaded blue) for which averages are displayed. Left-clicking without dragging will move the FFT region (shaded gray) when FFT analysis is enabled.



When the "magnifying glass" icon is selected, the mouse is used to select a rectangular region for zooming. Double clicking on the plot in this mode will reset the zoom to the initial default values. Zooming in on one of the plots sets the time axis for all of the plots to be set to the same region as the plot being zoomed on, keeping the time axis the same on all plots.



When the "compass" icon is selected the mouse is used to pan left & right & up & down on a plot. Moving one plot horizontally causes all of the plots to be moved horizontally, keeping the time axis the same on all plots.



Device Firmware & Expert Documentation


To find out more about IOLab firmware click here. To access expert documentation click here.

Please email me if you have any questions: helpme@iolab.science