Yet another project: a DAQ

Hi all ya' folks at Arduino Forums,

I am new here (obvious).

And... I need some help.

The thing is, I need a way to make a certain DAQ (Data AcQuisition device) using Arduino, which must be similar to the famous National Instruments' device called myDAQ1. I will appreciate any guidance and/or involvement.

Thanks everyone!

1 : Sorry for under-estimating you, dear reader, by explaining everything, as you must be an electronics expert (or amateur) and might as well know everything or most of the things I said

mobesa:
Hi all ya' folks at Arduino Forums,

I am new here (obvious).

And... I need some help.

The thing is, I need a way to make a certain DAQ (Data AcQuisition device) using Arduino, which must be similar to the famous National Instruments' device called myDAQ1. I will appreciate any guidance and/or involvement.

Thanks everyone!

1 : Sorry for under-estimating you, dear reader, by explaining everything, as you must be an electronics expert (or amateur) and might as well know everything or most of the things I said

You would have to post links to the specific DAQ unit's feature, datasheets, manuals,etc.
Many can utilize standard serial links that the arduino could utilize to communicate to such devices.
But you have to be sure of the voltage levels as in RS-232 serial Vs TTL serial that the arduino utilizes.

Lefty

retrolefty:
You would have to post links to the specific DAQ unit's feature, datasheets, manuals,etc.
Many can utilize standard serial links that the arduino could utilize to communicate to such devices.
But you have to be sure of the voltage levels as in RS-232 serial Vs TTL serial that the arduino utilizes.

Lefty

Hi Lefty,

Thanks a heap for your quick reply.

Here is a link to the DAQ about page: http://www.ni.com/mydaq/what-is/
Here is a Getting Started Guide: Getting Started with NI myDAQ
Here is a user guide (pdf): Product Documentation - NI?

As for the voltage levels and arduino serial links, I really do not understand... I am completely dumbfounded!

I am new to Arduino and Electronics in general.

I am willing to take an Electrical Engineering Interactive Lab MOOC very soon, and the instructor says that the myDAQ is needed for the course. However, National Instruments doesn't ship to our country and, on top of this, I can't afford $250 + Shipping.

So, I asked him if I were to make an Arduino alternative. He politely answered, "You will find online software for an oscilloscope and the function generator. Maybe a DMM too. But the spectrum analyzer will be harder and we supply some special instruments written in LabVIEW. Be interesting to see how far you get! By the way, we looked at the Arduino choices early on and none of them had the capabilities and performance we needed."

Can we prove him wrong?

I read that to mean your instructor is telling you and utilizing a teaching platform that relies on an existing commercial software and hardware. I think you would find that obtaining the level of detailed information needed (near) impossible to get, making a 'compatible' DAQ module based on an arduino a real problem. If a person could do it, he/she probably doesn't have a need to take that course of study. :smiley:

Thanks Lefty,

I agree... it seems all awkward, to build from scratch a compatible DAQ as mentioned and then attend a beginner's course in EEA.
So, where, according to you, should I learn EE instead of attending this class?

By the way, here are some pictures (just for fun) of the myDAQ from http://ecee.colorado.edu/~mathys/ecen2250/notes/myDAQ/index.html:

Looks like a lot!

So, where, according to you, should I learn EE instead of attending this class?

I have no specific recommendation. I learned electronics as a hobby while young and later more formally in Air Force tech schools. I'm not a EE so not the one to direct you. I do know that there are many on-line sources and some are free from schools like Stanford and MIT I believe?

Lefty

mobesa:
So, I asked him if I were to make an Arduino alternative. He politely answered, "You will find online software for an oscilloscope and the function generator. Maybe a DMM too. But the spectrum analyzer will be harder and we supply some special instruments written in LabVIEW. Be interesting to see how far you get! By the way, we looked at the Arduino choices early on and none of them had the capabilities and performance we needed."

Can we prove him wrong?

I doubt he will be proven wrong unless someone has the resources to assemble a strong team of hardware and software engineers together, especially given the time restraints. NI has some amazing software for data acquisition, probably not the best available for a dedicated task but the range of what their software does and the ease it does it is amazing.

I spent a lot of time developing data acquisition software development back when a C compiler fit on a 360k floppy disk and the libraries were on another floppy. I wish labView would have been available and could have spent the time programming doing Physics, buy alas I was a few processors too early.

Not Much Help,
wade

You could, fairly easily, program an arduino to do some data capture in real-time, but you'll have a fairly limited bandwidth and throughput. I think the fastest you can reasonably sample the ADC is about 100kHz, which is fine for some applications, but entirely too slow for signal processing. You would have to write custom drivers, or otherwise interface with the serial in some way to be able to dump the data. Also you'd have to create signal conditioning hardware. Everything else I believe can be reasonably done in Matlab or other similar math processing software.

Thanks guys for your answers.
Well, guess I'm not gonna get an arDAQ (Arduino DAQ)!!

So, I'll stick around in these forums to learn more about Arduino!
See ya' round!