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selecting Data Acquisition system

I am looking for information on selecting Data Acquisition system.

Currently I have:

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I have had it for about 8 years

And has worked ok for me. But I can not run it on any windows platform newer than Win 3.11. It has dos based software. I have 8 channels with 10+ transducers. The transducers have a 10V DC excitation +-5V.

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The software has always been buggy and I am looking for alternatives. My acquired readings usually only number up to 80 readings per application. The time between readings range from 3 seconds to minutes so I don't need a super fast system.

I want to write the values to Excel spreadsheet live and save the file every few minutes so I don't lose the data. That is the problem with the existing system - even with a battery backup system, I can lose the data from memory if I am away from the machine and there is an outage.

I assume I need an excitation source, +-5V DC, a digital to analog converter....

I am monitoring Force, pressure and length and would like to use the same transducers which are a 5 pin din. I can also change the calibration of the transducer and adjust the gain.

I have reviewed some websites on DA but I am unfamiliar with the terminology.

Can anyone recommend a inexpensive system with room to add extra channels in the future? I have some excel VBA code experience.

Thanks in advance

Pal

Reply to
Pal
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See National Instruments

Reply to
rjb

Try

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- I am sure they will have something that fits your requirements.

Good luck, Cameron:-)

Reply to
Cameron Dorrough

Recently, I evaluated USB data acquisition systems. Depending on required resolution and price constraint, you have several alternatives and some that immediately come to mind are

1) Measurement computing - PMD series USB daq ( Hardware+driver less than $400. Resolution and speed comparable to your current system) 2) Data Translation - DT9822 USB Module (For effective high resoution) 3) IOTech - USB Personal DAQ ( again for high resolution requirement)

All of these have Excel interface. Besides these USB options, plug-in daq boards at highly compitive prices are also options to consider as they are comparable to your current system - For example, for DAQ on limited budget, National Instruments NI PCI-6013, NI PCI-6014 boards. Signal conditioning can also control your choice of basic daq hardware. Sometimes requirements of portability/simplicity/ease of use dominate the technical requirements, and under such conditions USB interface is highly recommended. If you are designing from scratch, consider accuracy, flexibility, ease of use over the useful life of that DAQ system before putting any price constraint.

*************** Mohan Pawar MIO Instruments LLC
Reply to
Mohan Pawar

Try

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they have many different types of loggers, and probably the best software in the world.

Reply to
Patrik Johansson

Hi

Windmill Software products should fit the bill.

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or try Biodata at
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Regards

Jill

The message from "Pal" contains these words:

The message from "Pal" contains these words:

Reply to
Jill

If you are looking to input transducer data at a low sampling rate into an Excel spreadsheet, then one way to go would be to get a transducer interface module from a company called DGH

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The DGH modules have one or more analog inputs and a RS232 serial output so that you can connect them to the serial port on a PC. You would then be able to use a software product like WinWedge from TAL Technologies
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to read in the data from the DGH module directly into an Excel spreadsheet. The DGH modules can sample at any rate up to roughly 20Hz so they should be an excellent fit for your application. WinWedge is a simple utility that is designed to input RS232 serial data and feed the data to other applications like Excel in real time and it works great with the DGH modules.

Reply to
Thomas Lutz

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