Data Acquisition (DAQ) and Control from Microstar Laboratories

Signal Conditioning and Simultaneous Sampling of Filtered Signals

Design Filters Interactively with DAPstudio

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Bellevue, WA, June 8, 2006 -- Microstar Laboratories, Inc., maker of Data Acquisition Processor (DAP) boards and systems now has included interactive filter design in its DAPstudio measurement software. That means you can build and run applications based on the Signal Conditioning System (SCS) series with no other data acquisition software required. The field-proven SCS series connects directly to your sensors and to one or more specialized DAP boards (iDSC 1816 boards) in one or more PCs to give you as many channels as you need of filtered 16-bit resolution simultaneously sampled data logged directly to disk.

Scalable

Commercially available off-the-shelf PCs and associated disk controllers and drives have enough electrical power and enough computing power for a single PC to form a balanced network node with four iDSC 1816 boards and an SCS-32. A network node like this can continuously log to disk all 32 channels of conditioned anti-aliased data at the full data acquisition rate of 153.6k samples per second per channel – an overall rate of just under 5 million samples per second.

An additional synchronization board in each PC allows a number of PCs like this on a network to work as a single synchronized system with as many channels as you need.

Signal Conditioning

An SCS package provides direct connection to sensors, and offers many signal-conditioning services in a single convenient, powerful package. These include

  • current sensor excitation: 4 mA at up to 28 Volts
  • voltage sensor excitation: 1, 2, 5, and 10 Volts at up to 70 mA
  • quarter-, half-, and full-bridge resistor networks
  • 120 and 350 Ohm resistors as standard options
  • any value resistor networks, sensor by sensor
  • 10 full-scale options: 10 mV, 20 mV, 50 mV, 100 mV, 200 mV, 500 mV, and 1, 2, 5, and 10 Volts
  • available offset ranges from between +/-0.5V to +/-5V, depending on the input option range used
  • programmable gain with auto-calibration
  • programmable AC/DC coupling for ICP sensors
  • two high-resolution acquisition-synchronized timing channels per iDSC 1816

Filters

Before a signal reaches the analog-to-digital conversion stage on an iDSC 1816 board, it passes through an analog filter – on each channel – that takes out all frequencies above the Nyquist frequency. The subsequent digital waveform is therefore free of any alias frequencies that otherwise would corrupt the data. Onboard intelligence directs digital signal processing of the waveforms corresponding to filter designs you create interactively with DAPstudio. Valid cutoff frequencies fall in the range 2% to 80% of Nyquist. Above 50% of Nyquist, resulting filters roll off at better than 96 dB per quarter-octave.

Conclusion and Next Step

Find out more about DAPstudio. You can download the full version for a free trial. Use it – without hardware – to view any binary data files and to design filters. The company offers a CD that contains all software and hardware manuals for all products, including DAPstudio. You also can access all these manuals online. And you can order demonstration hardware that costs you nothing – unless you decide to keep it. Contact Microstar Laboratories for more information.

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Editorial Overview:

You now can design filters that roll off at better than 96dB per quarter octave. The latest version of DAPstudio measurement software from Microstar Laboratories, maker of Data Acquisition Processor (DAP) boards, lets you do this as well as build and run applications based on the Signal Conditioning System (SCS) series with no other data acquisition software required. The SCS connects directly to your sensors and to one or more specialized DAP boards (iDSC 1816 boards) in PCs to give you as many channels as you need of filtered 16-bit resolution data (+/-10mV to +/-10V). It offers many signal-conditioning services in a single convenient package.You can download the full version of DAPstudio for a free trial. Use it – without hardware – to view any binary data files and to design filters. Contact Microstar Laboratories for more information.

Note to the Editor:

Microstar Laboratories suggests this text as a caption for the available image:

You now can design filters that roll off at better than 96dB per quarter octave. Download the latest version of DAPstudio measurement software for a free trial and see for yourself. DAPstudio also lets you configure and control any DAP board in a system.

Microstar Laboratories, Inc. claims Microstar Laboratories, Data Acquisition Processor, DAP, iDSC, DAPL, and DAPstudio as trademarks. Other organizations may claim – or may have registered – as trademarks any trade names, logos, and service marks that appear in this document but not in the list above.

Microstar Laboratories makes it a practice to use an appropriate symbol at the first occurrence of a trademark or registered trademark name in a document, or to include trademark statements like this with the document.