Recover the original analog signal (time varying Voltage) from digitized version

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

I have been looking into how to convert my digital data back into analog.

--So, I have a two column ASCII data file (x: time, y=voltage amplitude) which I would like to convert into an analog signal (varying Voltage with time). There are Digital to Analog converters, but the good ones are quite expensive. There should be a more trivial way to achieve this.

Ultimately what I'd like to do is to reconstruct the original time variant voltage which was sampled every nano-second and recorded as an ASCII data file.

I thought I may feed the data into my laptop's sound card and re-generate the time variant voltage which I can then feed into the analyzer via the audio jack. Does this sound feasible?

2

Here is a 2 channel 12 bit DAC module I recently obtained from an E-bay seller. Works fine with the Arduino SPI library.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270632079322&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Lefty

3

yes, google for " soundcard as function generator" e.g. http://audiometer.co.uk/ has some nice progs don't know if they solve your probelem

Limitations:
· 21 days trial :frowning:

4

So, data sampled at the nanosecond realm?
Thats only 1Ghz, no Arduino will do that....