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RSS FeedsData Acquisition > Software > WinDaq As explained a few blog posts ago, PC based data acquisition is the process by which electrical signals (from sensors) are fed into electronic instruments, digitized and stored on a PC hard drive. To be of any real use however, these signals must be converted into meaningful engineering units Read More
Category Archives: Data Acquisition
Breaking Down Lengthy Recordings
Data Acquisition > Software > WinDaq When acquiring data, in most circumstances, it’s more practical to record several smaller files as opposed to one very large file. Perhaps you want to record continuously, until an event occurs, without filling up your hard drive with useless information? WinDaq data acquisition software includes tools to automate these Read More
Context-sensitive Help
Data Acquisition > Software > WinDaq Have you tried lately to access the help file for a fairly complex application? There’s a lot of information in there and digging through it to find the one nugget necessary for the task at hand can be time consuming. That’s why, a very long time ago, the Wizards Read More
How To Put Signal Noise Into Perspective
Data Acquisition > Software > WinDaq A customer contacted our support group the other day to complain about noise on his load cell signal and asking for the best way to remove it. We’ve seen this movie before and asked for a sample in the form of a recorded WinDaq data file so we could Read More
Hooking COM Ports: Terminal Emulators
Data Acquisition > USB In my previous post about hooking COM ports I described how it’s achieved and why a manufacturer might want to do it. I hinted that a particular advantage of an instrument that hooks a COM port is to allow simple communication using a terminal emulator. Briefly, a terminal emulator is software Read More
Minimize Data Loss in the Event of a Crash or Power Failure
In the world of PC based data acquisition, data loss is always a concern. Despite precautions, hard drives crash and power failures happen. However, there are some simple steps that you can take to minimize data loss. In locations where power outages are common, you might consider an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Make sure that Read More
Hooking COM Ports
This post isn’t about angling for fish called Com Ports, nor is it about any kind of lurid Com Port activity. It’s about how some contemporary USB-based instruments use a traditional device at the software level to provide a lot of programming flexibility. Plain and simple, the phrase COM port refers to a serial port Read More
Smart Phone vs. Dumb Phone
Data Acquisition > Products or Data Logger > Products I recently took the plunge and bought a “smart” phone. For 5 or 6 years, I was perfectly happy with my “dumb” phone. Granted, you can’t surf the web on a dumb phone; you can’t play Angry Birds, scan a QR code, or pull up a Read More
Using Analog Inputs as Digital Inputs
Data Acquisition > Software > WinDaq We’re often asked how to best measure a discrete input with an analog data acquisition system. Many of our products provide discrete (digital) input ports that can be read with WinDaq data acquisition software, but sometimes it’s better to acquire the discrete input along with the analog data through Read More
Frequency Measurements, Part 3 of 3
Data Acquisition > Starter Kits This final installment describes a ratiometric approach to frequency measurement used by the DI-149 and DI-155 data acquisition starter kits that resolves the problems encountered by pure analog and other digital techniques. As a recap, pure analog approaches will not allow very low frequency measurements, and although typical digital approaches Read More