PDA-based acquisition becomes cost effective

Engineers and scientists can now turn standard PDAs into customised, portable measurement tools with the new National Instruments CompactFlash data acquisition device.

Engineers and scientists can now turn standard PDAs into customised, portable measurement tools with the new National Instruments CompactFlash data acquisition (DAQ) device.

The NI CF-6004 device - which is slightly larger than a standard passport photo - plugs into any PDA with a CompactFlash slot to create a handheld instrument with the processing and wireless communication capabilities of the latest PDA devices.

The NI CF-6004 is a 14bit multifunction data acquisition device that plugs directly into a PDA CompactFlash slot to provide up to 200Ksample/s single-channel sampling on four analogue input channels in a handheld form factor.

It also offers four lines of digital I/O for controlling and measuring LVTTL or LVCMOS signals.

Engineers can use the NI LabView graphical programming environment for Pocket PC to acquire, analyse and view the data on their PDAs.

"The small size of the CompactFlash DAQ device opens up many new portable data acquisition and monitoring applications", said Tim Dehne, NI Senior Vice President of Research and Development.

"The concept of virtual instrumentation - where customers define their own instruments through graphical programming and modular hardware components - is moving to smaller and smaller form factors, making data acquisition even more convenient and portable".

The flexibility and mobility of the NI CF-6004 make it ideal for applications such as wearable computing, field monitoring and field diagnostics, as well as in laboratory and educational settings.

compared with buying several traditional, handheld instruments, engineers can save valuable space by using a single PDA with LabView and the NI CF-6004 DAQ device.

Because engineers can define their own unique instruments in LabView and then easily deploy them to their handheld devices, they can also change and redeploy these applications to repurpose their PDAs for new measurements.

In addition, because PDAs are typically less expensive than laptops, PDA-based data acquisition is a cost-effective option for handheld, portable instruments.

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