Connecting Serial Microcontroller Devices

Data Streamer can connect to serial enabled devices such as:

• Arduino Uno and related boards
• micro:bit
• Circuit Playground
• MXChip Azure IoT DevKit
• any other serial enabled device

This makes it possible to use Microsoft Excel as a flexible and dynamic streaming data dashboard.

Data Format

The data format for packaging streaming data is a comma Separated Values (CSV) string.

For Arduino UNO a serial message containing the value of analog input and the state of a digital input can be sent using the following code:

int analogSensor1;
int digitalSensor1;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(2, INPUT);  
}

void loop() {
  analogSensor1 = analogRead(A0);
  digitalSensor1 = digitalRead(2);

  Serial.print(analogSensor1);
  Serial.print(",");  
  Serial.print(digitalSensor1);
  Serial.println();
}

Connecting to Data Streamer

1. Plug in your serial enabled microcontroller to your computer with a USB cable.
2. On the Data Streamer ribbon in Excel click Connect A Device.
3. Click Start Data.

You should now see the values of your sensors streaming into your workbook.

Advanced Window Device Settings

Data Streamer also has an Advanced Window to manage device settings, view the serial data console, or to change global user settings. For more information see Advanced settings for Excel's Data Streamer add-in.