10+ reasons to be excited about the new Campbell Scientific CR300 datalogger

In this short interview, Kevin Rhodes, Director of Product Management at Campbell Scientific, tells us how the new CR300 datalogger will be helpful to customers and offers great value.

How does the CR300 help Campbell Scientific customers?

“Customers, especially those who embed our dataloggers in their own products told us that they desired the functionality and versatility of the CR1000 Measurement and Control Datalogger with a lower cost and smaller form factor; we listened and the CR300 is the result.

Like the CR200X, the CR300 is a lower-cost datalogger, but it is a better solution for these customers for several reasons:

• The CR300 has a far richer CRBasic command set and serial communications capabilities.
• The CR300 can store larger, more complex programs.
• The CR300 has an on-board compiler.
• By combining CR1000 functionality and versatility with the compact CR200X form at a comparable price, our customers now have the best of both worlds.”

Why are you excited about the CR300?

“I am excited about the CR300 Datalogger because it overcomes all of the limitations we heard about from our CR200X customers. The CR300 is the best-value datalogger we have ever built. The operating system of the CR300 is based on the CR1000, but I call it a “light” OS; it has almost all of the CR1000 functionality in a much small package. In addition, the CR300 processor is much faster than the one used in both the CR200X and the CR1000.

Here are more reasons why I’m excited about the CR300 and hope our customers will be too:

• The CR300 has great Internet and serial communications capabilities.
• With full PakBus capability, the CR300 can do routing. (The CR200X supports leaf node only.)
• We added more final storage memory, and because it’s flash memory, you don’t need an internal lithium battery for backup.
• A 24 bit ADC was added to provide incredible analogue measurement accuracy.
• By including a USB Micro-B Male 2.0 port, the user setup and experience for direct connection to a PC has been simplified. This means that the serial port is available for you to use with communication peripherals or serial sensors.
• The CR300 supports popular protocols such as Modbus and DNP3.
• Because the CRBasic instruction set resembles that of a CR1000, you don’t have to learn new instructions.
• The CR300 is fast enough to send mail through a number of popular email services that require SMTPS (TLS-encrypted SMTP).
• Because the CR300 is the same physical size as a CR200X, you can use the CR300 as a direct, drop-in replacement.
• The CR300 is the first Campbell Scientific datalogger that can measure 4 to 20 mA sensors natively.
• You can charge your battery through the CR300’s integrated charge regulator.”

What makes the CR300 different from other products?

“Actually, the nice part about the CR300 is that it is not so different from our other dataloggers. This means that the learning curve is very small. Integrators can capitalize on their knowledge of CRBasic and our popular CR800, CR1000, and CR3000 dataloggers for use with this new, lower-cost datalogger.”

How does the CR300 fit in with other Campbell Scientific products?

“If you think of our dataloggers as a family, the CR300 is positioned as the little sister. But she is definitely growing up. It fills the lower-cost, high-configurability niche.”

When is the CR300 available?

“Released on March 14, 2016, the CR300 is available for ordering now. You can look forward to new built-in wireless telemetry options in the future.”

 

Full details on the CR300 are available at www.campbellsci.eu/cr300 and the full range of dataloggers at www.campbellsci.eu/dataloggers