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Dedicated convertors speed acquisition

A Datel (UK) product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Mar 12, 2003

Datel's 32-channel PCI-417N series boards for desktop computers uses an A/D convertor for each channel.

Most PCIbus computer boards with multiple analogue input channels use a single overworked A/D convertor and analogue multiplexer.

While low in cost, as channel capacity grows, this design exhibits severe restrictions.

To avoid the inherent settling delays and speed limitations, Datel's 32-channel PCI-417N series boards for desktop computers uses an A/D convertor for each channel.

Besides the obvious increase in total system speed, the PCI-417N samples all channels exactly in parallel at rates up to 80kHz per channel (5.12Mbyte/s aggregate rate).

This concurrent A/D sampling enables all kind of time correlated applications such as medical ultrasound or in digital signal processing sonar or FFT engine testing.

Each input A/D convertor digitises to 14bit resolution, lowering system noise and increasing system dynamic range.

Full scale input voltage ranges of +5 or +10V are selectable per channel.

An onboard A/D memory system prevents sample loss streaming very large sample blocks to host disk or network.

The PCI-417N's bus controller acts as a temporary DMA (direct memory access) PCIbus master to blast blocks of A/D data while the computer's CPU concurrently processes previous data, all without dropping samples.

An executable CD-ROM and comprehensive users' manual with full software documentation accompanies each PCI-417N.

System developers will enjoy Datel's high performance software.

Instead of just the usual collection of 'blind' function binaries, the fully commented Visual C++ source code is optionally available (model PC-CDROMs).

The full working source code lets designers totally understand how everything works and, of course, custom tune it for their application.

Over 50 documented DLL functions also include LabView VI's and ActiveX controls for integration with third-party systems.

All major Windows versions up to XP and.NET are supported plus MS-DOS example code, a Linux example and Visual Basic applications.

The software fully exercises the board, saves and displays data, and is adaptable for any conceivable application.

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