REALbasic is an easy to learn programming language from REAL Software Inc. We have been using it for years as a great way for people to create their own programs for taking data and for controlling the output lines of LabPro.

If you are interested in writing programs to control LabPro in Mac OS X REALbasic, be sure to check out the article: “Data In – Using Vernier’s LabPro to collect data from probes”, by William H. Murray and Chris H. Pappas, in the July/August 2004 issue of REALbasic Developer™ magazine.

To use the LabPro with REALbasic, you must first place two support files in the proper location.

  • VSTLabProUSBRB is a plugin. You will need to put a copy of this plugin in your REALbasic plugins folder.
  • The package VST_USB.bundle is required to use Labro via a USB connection. It should be placed in the same folder as the project file (if you are using REALbasic 5.x) or in the same folder as the REALlbasic application (if you are using REALbasic 4.5.x).

The sample programs included in the download are Real Time Collect and NRT Collect. These are very simple applications to let you control LabPro and collect analog data.

  • Real-Time Collect.rb is program that displays the reading of an auto-ID sensor one point at a time. Most of the interesting code is in the Action for the button PushButtonRT. Change the time (second number) in the s{3,0.5,-1,0} command to change the rate of data collection.
  • NRT Collect.rb is a program to read the voltage from a sensor 10 times at a rate of 100 points/s. Change the variables nNumPointsWanted or nDataRate to change the number of points collected or the rate of data collection. This program returns data from the LabPro in hexadecimal format (for speed) and that is why voltages are read, instead of calibrated sensor readings.

Download the LabPro with REALbasic plugins and sample programs for OS X.