REGEX with Serial Input Data Point

thutchis

In my lab I periodically run a moisture test on the germination and kilning of the malt. I use a moisture balance that outputs the test results as ASCII text on a RS232 serial port. I need some help extracting the moisture value from the output strings to enter as a data point.

The output looks like this:

***** AUTO STOP *****
LAST TEMP: 131 C
FINAL MASS: 12.215 g
TEST TIME: 56:15
MASS LOST: 8.531 g
RESULT: 41.12 %M
----------------------------- (the dashes are mine)
I need to extract just the value (in this case 41.12) from the "RESULT:" line using REGEX. I am NOT very good with regular expressions and have been pulling my hair out all morning. The best I have come up with is: "/RESULT:\s*([\d][\d].[\d][\d])\s%M*/g" but that selects the entire line, not just the value. Any help would be very appreciated.

phildunlap

Hi thutchis,

You are using a serial data source?

It sounds like if you used a value index of 1 instead of 0 you should be extracting your value, currently. You don't need to use the /.../g type format to input the regex, you can enter what would come between the slashes for the serial data source fields.

I always encourage people to do their troubleshooting using a setup that will catch all the values, for your data, that might mean something like...

DATA SOURCE:
Use terminator: No
Message Regex: ()[^;]+
Point Identifier Group: 1
Configuration in Hex: No

DATA POINT:
Data Type: Alphanumeric
Point Identifier:
Value Group: 0
Value Regex [^;]+

I am using [^;]+ because you do not have any semicolons in your example data, so it will match everything. You could probably get the specific value you're looking for with a serial data point setup on that data source like,

DATA POINT:
Data Type: Alphanumeric
Point Identifier:
Value Group: 1
Value Regex [^;]+RESULT: (\d+\.?\d*) %M.*

thutchis

Thanks Phil,
Yes, I plan to use a Serial Data Source.

I am using a Regex tester at: https://regexr.com/ to work out the correct syntax for getting my desired value into a data point. If I put your suggestion, " [^;]+RESULT: (\d+.?\d*) %M.* " in the tester it shows "no match". I would assume the Mango REGEX parser would perform the same.

phildunlap

Hmm, that is not my experience with that website:

Perhaps it is from the extra spaces inside your quote marks?

thutchis

@phildunlap said in REGEX with Serial Input Data Point:

[^;]+

Strange, I didn't use the spaces after/before the double quotes, they was only to indicate the quotes were not included in the expression I was trying to convey to the reader. But I still don't get a match. Your screen shot shows the entire message was matched, not just the value between "RESULT:" and "%M".

phildunlap

It shows that value was extracted as group #1, which would be the value group index in Mango.

It looks like I was supposed to have written (\d+\.?\d*) but the \ before the dot was removed the forum's formatting, and so I didn't copy it into the image. But, it would work either way.

thutchis

I was able to get the REGEX tester to duplicate your results and got the value as group 1.

Thanks for your help today, I learned a lot. I plan to connect the serial data source to the Mango server tomorrow. I'll see what happens then.

Tom

thutchis

I connected the moisture balance as a serial data source and it works. I get the percent moisture value as an alpha-numeric which is fine for logging. I don't need any charting. I changed the Regex to include "%M" so a unit is displayed when looking at point details.

The data source (moisture balance RS232) sends a 0x04 (EOT End Of Transmission) at the end of each message. If I try to use a terminator string of 0x04 it won't work. If I ignore the terminator it does work, so no big deal. Just curious why I cant use the hex value 0x04 as a terminator. Is there another encoding that would work?

Now I need to figure out how to have the result emailed to me when the data point is logged.
Tom

phildunlap

Hi Tom,

At the bottom of the edit point page is a section for event detectors. You're either looking for a Change or Update detector. After the event detector is created, you will need to create an Email event handler on the /event_handlers.shtm page for the event, and you will need to configure your SMTP server in the system settings.