National Instruments extends USB data acquisition offering to 40 devices

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March 2007 Data Acquisition & Telemetry

National Instruments announced two new high-performance M Series multifunction data acquisition (DAQ) devices for USB. With the new NI USB-6221 and USB-6229 DAQ devices, which provide up to 32 analog inputs with a 250 kS/s single-channel sampling rate, NI has extended its USB DAQ offering to 40 devices. The complete NI USB offering now includes high-speed devices featuring 1 MS/s sampling speeds and modular USB data acquisition systems for low-, mid- and high-channel-count applications.

The USB-6221 and USB-6229 - as well as bus-powered and other high-performance USB DAQ devices - feature NI signal streaming technology, which utilises the bandwidth and performance of Hi-Speed USB technology to allow bidirectional high-speed transfer of data between the USB device and a computer.

NI signal streaming technology makes it possible to acquire and generate multiple analog and digital I/O signals simultaneously. Because the technology relies on message-based rather than register-based configuration, much of the configuration takes place on the device, avoiding unnecessary USB transfers. Engineers can stream more synchronous analog and digital data for data-intensive applications than is possible using USB DAQ devices alone. Additionally, with the plug-and-play connectivity of USB, engineers and scientists have an easy-to-use, portable solution for their measurement, monitoring and control applications.

The USB-6221 and USB-6229 DAQ devices offer many features equivalent to their PCI M Series counterparts. The new devices include up to 32 16-bit, 250 kS/s analog input channels; four 16-bit, 833 kS/s analog output channels; 48 digital I/O channels with up to 32 clocked at 1 MHz; and two 32-bit counter/timers, all backed by M Series technology including a low-noise NI-PGIA 2 amplifier and NI-MCal, a third-order calibration methodology correcting for gain, offset and nonlinearity errors at all input ranges.

Additionally, National Instruments USB DAQ devices have software support for both programmers and non-programmers. Each device is shipped with free datalogging software to help users take full advantage of the ease of use and plug-and-play capabilities offered by USB by shortening time to measurement. For programmers, NI-DAQmx driver software and measurement services - a powerful suite of datalogging tools, configuration management and wizard-like development interfaces - can dramatically decrease the hidden costs of software development, system setup, configuration and calibration time.

The driver software features multidevice synchronisation, automatic code generation and a high-level, open API that offers the same programming environment across devices and programming languages. NI-DAQmx can control every aspect of a data acquisition system, from configuration to application development. The software driver works with National Instruments LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, Measurement Studio and SignalExpress, as well as C/C++/C# and Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual Studio .NET languages.

For more information contact National Instruments South Africa, +27 (0)800 203199.

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Data Acquisition & Telemetry

National Instruments extends USB data acquisition offering to 40 devices

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