Data Acquisition Software: How Do You Make Them?Surprisingly, building Data acquisition software is not as tough as you thought it would be. All that you have to know is understand some basic concepts that are behind such programming work. You need to work on device interfacing and also understand how the drivers for various devices work. It is not a difficult option really. But then, when you look at it from out side you might find it tough. Let us take a swift look at what you need to do while building your Data acquisition software. The first step is to identify all the devices that you are going to work with. You need to understand all those devices that come between you and the measuring unit. You possibly have a transducer that would convert the measured unit into electrical form. If it is already in the electrical form this is the device that would possibly convert it into a form that your Analog to digital converter will be able to work on. From the transducer, the signal goes to the ADC where it gets converted in to a voltage level and binary form that your processing devices can handle. Well, at this stage you really have your information up in front of your door steps. These are the two steps involved before the signal reaches your place. Now at your system port your Data acquisition software should pick up the information needed. The electronics that transfers the data from the measuring unit to the port of your computer or processor might be working under two modes. There are devices that are slaves and there are others that are not slaves. But they are not masters again though they might really be controlling the work to a great extent. In case your devices are slaves, then you might have to control them from your computer. They will have commands and command syntaxes that their drivers will suggest. You need to employ these drivers and the commands that they support to get your Data acquisition software going. It is easier with the other kind of devices. They do the work themselves and throw the output to the port. Now in these cases, the devices work independent of the controlling system and there are no drivers specially required for this purpose. You need not master any thing as well. But you need to ensure that you are working in sync with the devices as well. This is so because; the devices might be throwing out a new value on the port every few seconds. And if you need to pick up the latest value on the port you need to keep polling for a change or collect data in sync with the operating system. You can implement either of them using your Data acquisition software. The Data acquisition software can be made to work in line with the frequency at which the devices collecting the data work. There are also cases where you might have to tune the Data acquisition software for picking up information as and when some thing goes wrong or right. |