polymorph:
There are faster Arduinos. The Due and the (much less expensive) Teensy 3.1 are 32 bit Cortex ARM processor based running at 84MHz and 72MHz, with 12 bit ADCs. They are 3.3V boards, so level shifters must be used to connect to 5V peripherals. Handily, SD cards and I2C use 3.3V. For running LCD screens and other 5V stuff, resistive voltage dividers can be used to get signals back to the Teensy 3 or Due, and a CMOS buffer like the 4050 can be used to convert 3.3V logic coming out to 5V logic.$20 for the Teensy 3.1:
Teensy USB Development Board$50 for the Arduino Due:
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardDueNone has the number of analog inputs you need. However, they all use analog multiplexers to run multiple analog inputs to one single ADC. The Teensy 3.1 and the Due can do analog sampling much faster than 16MHz 8 bit Arduinos. So you could just add an analog multiplexer with at least 32 inputs on it, or two with 16 inputs each.
74HC4067 is a 2 to 6V analog multiplexer, 16 channel with !Enable pin.
Tutorial – 74HC4067 16-Channel Analog Multiplexer Demultiplexer | tronixstuff.comIf you want 10 bits of data, you need better than the 10 bit ADC in a garden variety Arduino. Noise, quantization errors, distortion, etc. cause the lowest bit or two to become meaningless noise. There is something called ENOB or Effective Number Of Bits, where when you discount the bits that are merely noise, you end up with, for instance, 8.5 ENOB from a 10 bit ADC. Stock Arduino boards do nothing to reduce the noise, no RC decoupling network to supply power to the ADC section as recommended by Atmel.
So you'll need at least 12 bits of ADC, anyway. The above ARM based boards can do that, and can do the conversion much faster.
http://www.analog.com/static/imported-files/tutorials/MT-003.pdf
Resolution vs. ENOB | Analog Devices
I'd like to ask for a clarification:
Do you mean that 32 channels must be sampled, 2000 times per second each (500uS per channel)?Or do you mean that conversions must happen 2000 times per second, in which case each channel is sampled 2000/32 or 62.5 times per second (16mS per channel)?
Is the data sent back continuously to a computer somewhere, or is it collected and stored, say on an SD card?
The Teensy 3.1 (not the 3.0) has 21 analog inputs, and is 5V logic tolerant. At just under $20, I'd probably just use two of these to get the required number of analog inputs.
i like your idea of using two Teensy 3.1, but how will i synchronize them together? Is there a tutorial link that you can post so i can have an idea of how to use it for my application (also making it wireless)? thanks a lot for your ideas and time