The first generation Smart Temperature Probe, CCTemp, developed at Concord Consortium is designed to be powered directly from a Macintosh serial port. This version uses 0-5V RS-485 communication and is not compatible with standard RS-232 serial interfaces which use positive and negative signal levels.
The CCTemp was developed by Concord's NSF-funded Science Learning in Context Project (SLiC). The CCTemp is one of a class of small instuments combining sensors and interfaces we call SmartProbes. Checkout the SmartProbe home page for more information.
The CCTemp is calibrated when it is manufactured and can be recalibrated in the field later by the user if a suitable reference grade thermometer is available. We use a very long mercury thermometer accurate to +/- 0.1 degree C.
The sensing range is -40 to 110 degrees C. The sensor is encased in polyolefin adhesive-lined heat shrink tubing and should be resistant to most chemicals.
When the probe is connected to an active serial port it will turn on and transmit data in the standard Vernier Serial Box format at 2400 bps, and 53.9 data samples per second. This means that the standard Vernier Data Logger program can be used to collect and display data from the probe. CCTemp has only one sensor however the calibrated data from the probe is reported as Port 1 and uncalibrated data is reported as Port 2.
With the appropriate program the CCTemp probe will leave Data mode and enter Command mode where recalibration is done. This capability is not built into Data Logger. An end user program for recalibration is not available yet.
To use any CCTemp probe with DataLogger you will need a copy of the Data Logger experiment and calibration file. You can download an self-extracting-archive here:
Data Logger Calibration and Experiment Files for CCTemp probes on the Mac
The experiment and calibration files are named as follows
CC-temperature-feb25
CC-temperature-feb25.CLB
You can automatically start Data Logger and load the calibration file by double-clicking
the experiment file.
More information about he testing, calibration of and experiments with the CCTemp probe.
CCTemp Testing, Calibration, and Experiments
If you have technical questions about the CC Smart Temperature Probe you can write to me, Stephen Bannasch at stephen@concord.org.