As a basic energy of our counrry . the determination of calorific value of coal is very important to the excavation and efficient exploitation of energy . the traditional method of determination has many complicated coursese and always needs much work made by man . so the research of automatic calorie meter makes significentthrough the detailed analysis of principle and method of measurement , an automatic measuring instrument controlled by microcomputer is designed in this paper in order to take the place of manual operations . the instrument can almost do every operation by itself , such as the control of experimental progress , data collection , data computation and the printout of experimental results . furthermore , a distributing system of measurement building on field bus is designed too . under the control of personal computer , several calorie meters can work independently and simultaneously . on the other hand , a powerful measuring and control software is developed using visual computer language - visual basic and visual c + +