Data acquisition is the sampling of the real world to generate data that can be manipulated by a computer. Sometimes abbreviated DAQ or DAS, data acquisition typically involves acquisition of signals and waveforms and processing the signals to obtain desired information. The components of data acquisition systems include appropriate sensors that convert any measurement parameter to an electrical signal, which is acquired by data acquisition hardware.

Acquired data are displayed, analyzed, and stored on a computer, either using vendor supplied software, or custom displays and control can be developed using various general purpose programming languages such as BASIC, C, Fortran, Java, Lisp, Pascal. A programming language is an Artificial language that can be used to write programs which control the behavior of a machine particularly a Computer. In Computer programming, BASIC (an Acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of High-level programming languages tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured Fortran (previously FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative Programming language that is especially suited to A lisp ( OE wlisp, stammering is a Speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural Programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small Specialised programming languages used for data acquisition include, EPICS used to build large scale data acquisition systems, LabVIEW, which offers a graphical programming environment optimized for data acquisition and MATLAB provides a programming language but also built-in graphical tools and libraries for data acquisition and analysis. The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System ( EPICS) is a software environment used to develop and implement Distributed control systems to operate devices LabVIEW (short for Lab oratory V irtual I nstrumentation E ngineering W orkbench is a platform and development environment for a MATLAB is a numerical computing environment and Programming language.

Contents 1 How data is acquired 2 History 3 See also 4 References 5 Books on data acquisition

How data is acquired

Data acquisition begins with the physical phenomenon or physical property of an object (under investigation) to be measured. A phenomenon (from Greek φαινόμενoν, pl φαινόμενα - phenomena) is any observable occurrence A physical property is any aspect of an object or substance that can be measured or perceived without changing its identity. This physical property or phenomenon could be the temperature or temperature change of a room, the intensity or intensity change of a light source, the pressure inside a chamber, the force applied to an object, or many other things. An effective data acquisition system can measure all of these different properties or phenomena.

A transducer is a device that converts a physical property or phenomenon into a corresponding measurable electrical signal, such as voltage, current, change in resistance or capacitor values, etc. A transducer is a device usually electrical, electronic, Electro-mechanical, Electromagnetic, Photonic, or Photovoltaic The ability of a data acquisition system to measure different phenomena depends on the transducers to convert the physical phenomena into signals measurable by the data acquisition hardware. Transducers are synonymous with sensors in DAQ systems. A transducer is a device usually electrical, electronic, Electro-mechanical, Electromagnetic, Photonic, or Photovoltaic A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument There are specific transducers for many different applications, such as measuring temperature, pressure, or fluid flow. A transducer is a device usually electrical, electronic, Electro-mechanical, Electromagnetic, Photonic, or Photovoltaic DAQ also deploy various Signal Conditioning techniques to adequately modify various different electrical signals into voltage that can then be digitized using ADCs.

Signals may be digital (also called logic signals sometimes) or analog depending on the transducer used. A digital system uses discrete (discontinuous values usually but not always Symbolized Numerically (hence called "digital" to represent information for An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature (variable of the signal is a representation of some other

Signal conditioning may be necessary if the signal from the transducer is not suitable for the DAQ hardware to be used. The signal may be amplified or deamplified, or may require filtering, or a lock-in amplifier is included to perform demodulation. Lock-in amplifierjpg|thumb|250px|and one from Stanford Research Systems Various other examples of signal conditioning might be bridge completion, providing current or voltage excitation to the sensor, isolation, linearization, etc.

Analog signals tolerate almost no cross talk and so are converted to digital data, before coming close to a PC or before traveling along long cables. For analog data to have a high signal to noise ratio, the signal needs to be very high, and sending +-10 Voltags along a fast signal path with a 50 Ohm termination requires powerful drivers. With a slightly mismatched or no termination at all, the voltage along the cable rings multiple time until it is settled in the needed precision. Digital data can have +-0. 5 Volt. The same is true for DACs. Also digital data can be sent over glass fiber for high voltage isolation or by means of Manchester encoding or similar through RF-couplers, which prevent net hum. In Telecommunication, Manchester code (also known as Phase Encoding, or PE) is a Line code in which the encoding of each data Bit Also as of 2007 16bit ADCs cost only 20 $ or €.

DAQ hardware is what usually interfaces between the signal and a PC. It could be in the form of modules that can be connected to the computer's ports (parallel, serial, USB, etc. A parallel port is a type of interface found on Computers ( personal and otherwise for connecting various peripherals In Computing, a serial port is a Serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one Bit at a time (contrast . . ) or cards connected to slots (PCI, ISA) in the mother board. A motherboard is the central or primary Printed circuit board (PCB making up a complex electronic system such as a modern Computer or Laptop Usually the space on the back of a PCI card is too small for all the connections needed, so an external breakout box is required. The cable between this Box and the PC is expensive due to the many wires and the required shielding and because it is exotic. DAQ-cards often contain multiple components (multiplexer, ADC, DAC, TTL-IO, high speed timers, RAM). These are accessible via a bus by a micro controller, which can run small programs. A microcontroller (also MCU or µC is a functional Computer system-on-a- chip. The controller is more flexible than a hard wired logic, yet cheaper than a CPU so that it is alright to block it with simple polling loops. For example: Waiting for a trigger, starting the ADC, looking up the time, waiting for the ADC to finish, move value to RAM, switch multiplexer, get TTL input, let DAC proceed with voltage ramp. As 16 bit ADCs and DACs and OpAmps and sample and holds with equal precision as of 2007 only run at 1 MHz, even low cost digital controllers like the AVR32 have about 100 clock cycles for bookkeeping in between. The AVR32 is a 32-bit RISC Microprocessor architecture designed by Atmel. Reconfigurable computing may deliver high speed for digital signals. Reconfigurable computing is a computing paradigm combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing Digital signal processors spend a lot of silicon on arithmetic and allow tight control loops or filters. A digital signal processor ( DSP or DSP micro) is a specialized Microprocessor designed specifically for Digital signal processing, generally A control system is a device or set of devices to manage command direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems The fixed connection with the PC allows for comfortable compilation and debugging. A cross compiler is a Compiler capable of creating Executable code for a platform other than the one on which the compiler is run Using an external housing a modular design with slots in a bus can grow with the needs of the user. High speed binary data needs special purpose hardware called Time to digital converter and high speed 8 bit ADCs are called oscilloscope#Digital storage oscilloscope, which are typically not connected to DAQ hardware, but directly to the PC. In electronic Instrumentation and Signal processing, a time to digital converter (abbreviated TDC) is a device for converting a signal of sporadic An oscilloscope (commonly abbreviated to scope or O-scope) is a type of Electronic test equipment that allows signal Voltages to be viewed

Driver software that usually comes with the DAQ hardware or from other vendors, allows the operating system to recognize the DAQ hardware and programs to access the signals being read by the DAQ hardware. A good driver offers high and low level access. So one would start out with the high level solutions offered and improves down to assembly instructions in time critical or exotic applications.

History

Scientific Solutions invented the PC based data acquisition in 1981 with the introduction of the LabMaster, BaseBoard, DADIO, LabTender, IEEE-488 hardware and LabPac software. Scientific Solutions was formally a part of Tecmar. Tecmar was an American manufacturer of PC enhancement products based in the suburbs of Cleveland OH. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}

See also

• Signal processing
• Data acquisition system
• Data analysis
• Test method
• Input devices:
  • 3D scanner
  • Analog to digital converter
  • Time to digital converter
• Hardware:
  • CAMAC
  • Industrial Ethernet
  • Industrial USB
  • NIM
  • PXI
  • VMEbus
  • VXI
  • LXI
• Software:
  • Comedi
  • EPICS
  • LabVIEW
  • MATLAB

References

Books on data acquisition

• Simon McBeath (2002). Tecmar was an American manufacturer of PC enhancement products based in the suburbs of Cleveland OH. Tecmar was an American manufacturer of PC enhancement products based in the suburbs of Cleveland OH. Competition Car Data Logging: A Practical Handbook. J. H. Haynes & Co. . ISBN 1-85960-653-9.  
• Simon S. Young (2001). Computerized Data Acquisition and Analysis for the Life Sciences. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56570-7.  
• W. R. Leo (1994). Techniques for Nuclear and Particle Physics Experiments. Springer. ISBN 3-540-57280-5.  
• Charles D. Spencer (1990). Digital Design for Computer Data Acquisition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37199-6.  
• B. G. Thompson & A. F. Kuckes (1989). IBM-PC in the laboratory. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32199-9.  

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