This is Adel. I am trying do a project in on of my electrical engineering classe

This is Adel. I am trying do a project in on of my electrical engineering classes.
The task is the following
*There is an exhaust chamber
*There is an AVL 415S Smoke Meter. (i will send the AVL smoke handout if we agree about the project)
*We need to connect the meter to a computer to read data of the emission caused by the exhaust chamber.This project goal is to use a PC to command the smoke meter to gather data and then move that data from the smoke meter through the COM1 RS232 port to the PC for use in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.We are planning to use excel VBA. We need to create buttons in Excel VBA to do the following:
1. A button excel VBAs o that when we click it it turn on the meter.
2. A second button so that when we click it it tells the meter to read data from the machine.
3. A third button so that when we click it it will extract data and put them in excell spreadsheet.
4. A fourth button to turn off the meter.
We will have to use Graphical User Interface for this project.Also we need to know how we can hock up a serial cable between two computers and test these commands before we can test them in the meter. after that we can modify these codes according the AVL handout to make them work with AVL smoke meter.I would like also to know if we can get the project revised in case we are asked to do more things on it.The time periode for this project can be 2 weeks.
Anther option is to use Labview so tell me guys which one is better.Thanks
Adel
adeljz@hotmail.com