F
LEXCELL
®
I
NTERNATIONAL
C
ORPORATION
7
The main display window (Fig. 8) for each
Flex Jr.
™
Tension FlexLink
®
has several
features that allow more precise monitoring of
the regimen. To access this window, select the
appropriate FlexLink
®
(
FlexLink#n
) from the
Controllers
menu, where “n” is the
FlexLink
®
number to which the regimen will
be downloaded. The FlexLink
®
number can
be found on the LCD screen on the front of the
FlexLink
®
controller box.
Figure 7.
Flex Jr.
™
tutorial
Figure 8.
Main display window
All of the remaining information and
command button states in the main display
window reflect the current state of the
system for the currently selected Flex Jr.
™
Tension FlexLink
®
.
It is possible to simultaneously assign and
run a different regimen for each of the
attached FlexLinks
®
.
In the upper left hand corner of the window
is a section labeled
Plot Units
. This function
allows users to change the units of the y-
axis: % elongation, kPa, strain, millistrain
(mstrain), or microstrain (ustrain). To select
a particular unit, click on the appropriate
button beside the unit label.
The next block to the right is a section
labeled
Smoothing
. One expects data
patterns to represent normal distributions of
a function describing a straight line,
sinusoidal curve, etc. Therefore, the plotted
points of a mathematical function should be
a predictable data set that is “smooth” (i.e., a
curve
comprised
of
points
whose
coordinates are predicted by the function).
For a straight line, the equation would be y
= mx + b; for a power function, the equation
may be y = x
2
or some derivative thereof. In
general, data patterns may be confounded
with noise. For the case of the pressure plot
as a function of voltage from the Flex Jr.
™
Tension System pressure transducer, the
rough data yield a plot with a coefficient of
variation of only 0.01%. Therefore, the
signal to noise ratio for the combined
Flexcell
®
system of circuits, hardware and
transducers is high, lending confidence in
the displayed plot. Nevertheless, the user can
select a data smoothing option that is a
simple weighted average of the points. The
Smoothing section contains the option of
either applying no smoothing (
None
) to the
data points returned from the FlexLink
®
or
of applying a three-point moving average
filter (
Moving Average
) to the incoming
data. Choose the desired affect by clicking
on the appropriate button.
Below the box for Smoothing is a section
used to show the current
X
and
Y
