Summary: Harvard University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science uses WinWedge Pro to capture receiver data from a balloon-borne carbon dioxide meter and Campbell Scientific datalogger, parse it, and feed it directly into Microsoft Excel for real-time graphing — with no custom programming.
The Challenge
Balloons have been doing atmospheric research for many decades. The data is transmitted via radio (radiosondes) to receivers on the ground. Harvard’s ozone research team needed readings from a CO2 meter, carried aloft by balloon and telemetered (via radiosondes) to a ground receiver, to land in Excel automatically and accurately, in real time. Manually transcribing telemetry was impossible; writing custom acquisition software for a NASA-funded research project was an expense and a delay the team wanted to avoid.
The Solution
The airborne CO2 meter feeds a Campbell Scientific datalogger; the balloon telemeters readings from this to a receiving unit on the ground. This passes the data stream into the serial port of a PC running WinWedge Pro. WinWedge parses and filters the incoming stream and transfers each reading via DDE directly into Microsoft Excel, which graphs and analyzes the data in read-time as it arrives.
The Department’s research is used in conjunction with other information gathered from satellites and measuring instruments on the ground. The team pairs this with statistical software for deeper analysis of large datasets, to show how pollution moves through the atmosphere. The project is funded by NASA, and others, who want to build aircraft and rockets that are less damaging to the Earth’s Ozone Layer and atmosphere.
The Results
- Live remote data collection from airborne instruments through a telemetry receiver
- Serial data delivered directly into Excel and the team’s analysis software — no retyping, no custom coding
- Completely accurate, real-time capture suitable for published atmospheric research
What Harvard users say
“WinWedge solved our problem perfectly, and tech support got our application up and running the same day. Highly recommended!” — Fulton Rockwell, Harvard University, MA.
How you’d set this up today
The same architecture works on current Windows 11 PCs with today’s WinWedge Pro. A modern receiver would typically connect through a USB-to-serial adapter (which Windows presents as a COM port that WinWedge reads directly). If the ground-based receiver outputs over Ethernet or Wi-Fi these TCP/IP ports can connect directly through WinWedge Pro’s TCP-Wedge to input the data into Excel. Excel’s live charting works exactly as it did here: each parsed reading lands in the next row, and your graphs update in real time.
Collecting data from your own instruments?
Download a free, fully-functional WinWedge or WinWedge Pro trial, or call (800) 722-6004 — we’ll tell you in one call whether WinWedge is the right solution for your RS232/USB/Ethernet-connected device and data collection requirements (to PC applications or web-forms).
TALtech support is always free and unlimited – even on the Trial version!
Updated July 2026 (Originally published in our application archives)