Data acquisition
Encyclopedia : D : DA : DAT : Data acquisition
Data acquisition is the sampling of the real world to generate data that can be manipulated by a computer. Sometimes abbreviated DAQ, 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 typically is displayed, analyzed, and stored on a PC. This is achieved by using vendor supplied interactive control software and hardware such as PowerLab, or custom displays and control can be accomplished using a programming language such as experix, LabVIEW, Visual Basic, or C. EPICS is used to build large scale data acquisition systems.
How Data is acquired
Transducers convert measurable physical phenomenon into electric signals. Examples of tranducers include microphones for sound and photocells for light.
Signals may be digital or analog depending on the tranducer used.
Signal conditioning may be necessary if the signal from the tranducer is not suitable for the DAQ hardware to be used. The signal may be amplified or deamplified, or may require filtering.
DAQ hardware is what usually interfaces between a 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...) or cards connected to slots (PCI, ISA) in the mother board.
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.
See also
- Signal processing
- Data Acquisition System
- Input devices:
- * Laser range scanner
- * Analog to digital converter
- * Time to digital converter
- Hardware:
- * PowerLab
- * NIM
- * CAMAC
- * PXI
- * VMEbus
- * VXI
- Software:
- * Chart software
- * Generic Data Acquisition
- * EPICS
External links
- [Data Acquisition in industrial and manufacturing applications]
- [Midas PSI] GPLed DAQ software used in particle and nuclear experiments.
- [COMEDI] Project developing open-source drivers, tools, and libraries for data acquisition
- [Data Acquisition Web]
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