Evaluation Engineering - 28

DATA ACQUISITION

instrument to record all data to the onboard memory or directly to the drive." The
company also offers a software solution
called Autoware 3. "With the software, users program the system to save all testing
data as well as provide print reports."
Piotrowski said that in mid-2020,
Ikonix USA will release a new SaaS. "This
will allow for complete cloud storage of
instrument information, test sequences, and test data," he said, adding that
data can be recorded anytime, anywhere
without the risk of losing any information. "Ikonix will be the first electrical
safety testing manufacturer to offer a
SaaS platform for customer data and
analytics," he said.

Software toolboxes for DAQ
MathWorks addresses data acquisition
with its software tools. "MATLAB is our
platform for data acquisition and analysis," said Eric Wetjen, senior product marketing manager, test and measurement
solutions. "With MATLAB and add-on
toolboxes like Data Acquisition Toolbox,
Signal Processing Toolbox, and Statistics
and Machine Learning Toolbox, our customers can collect and analyze all their
data from the same environment." He said
the company offers additional toolboxes
for acquiring data from webcams and
frame grabbers for computer-vision applications and from software defined radios (SDR) for wireless and RF algorithm
development.
"Data Acquisition Toolbox lets users bring data directly into MATLAB
from USB, PCI, PCI Express, PXI, and
PXI Express DAQ devices from National
Instruments and other vendors," Wetjen
said. "For less demanding applications,
we have hardware support packages
that let user collect data from Arduino
and Raspberry Pi directly into MATLAB.
MATLAB users can then leverage built-in
apps to configure and run a data acquisition session without writing MATLAB
code. To later set up automated procedures, users can automatically generate
MATLAB code from these built-in apps.
Using apps and command-line functions,
users can easily control the analog input,
analog output, counter/timer, and digital
I/O subsystems of their DAQ devices."

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EVALUATION ENGINEERING MAY/JUNE 2020

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He explained that once the data is in
MATLAB, customers can use MATLAB
and analysis add-on toolboxes to analyze
and visualize data for a variety of signalprocessing and AI applications. "For example, our customers often use Signal
Processing Toolbox functions and its
Signal Analyzer app to explore and preprocess signals. This app can be used to
apply low-pass, high-pass, bandpass, or
band-stop filters to a signal, and it can
remove trends and compute signal envelopes. With the functions and apps provided by Statistics and Machine Learning
Toolbox and Deep Learning Toolbox,
our customers build and train predictive models for AI and predictive-maintenance applications. These toolboxes
provide algorithms for feature extraction,
classification and regression algorithms
for supervised machine learning, and
clustering algorithms for unsupervised
machine learning."

Applications, challenges, and trends
The topics covered in this article span
the gamut of DAQ products: simulation
and data-analysis software, rugged and
portable data recorders, modular instruments, and high-channel-count systems.
Vendors will continue to leverage advances in data-converter and communications
technologies to meet the challenges of
future DAQ applications.
Several contributors to this report
elaborated on applications, trends, and
challenges in the DAQ marketplace. For
example, Pederson at B&K Precision said,
"Our data-acquisition solutions feature
fast sampling rates of up to 1 MS/s, wide
input voltages from a few millivolts to
1,000 V, up to 16 bits of resolution, and
battery life up to 15 hrs. This makes our
instruments suitable for a wide range
of applications from small sensor signal logging to large electrical power
analysis in both portable and benchtop
environments."
Pederson added, "The biggest challenge is staying on the leading edge
of DAQ technology by providing more
channels, better accuracy, and a lower
price. We've met this challenge headon with new platforms and by adapting
our user interface to keep up with an

ever-evolving market and changing customer requirements.
He cited the DAS30/50/60 Series input
voltage up to 500 V, fast sampling rate
to 1 MS/s, resolution of 16 bits, and the
integrated power analysis feature. He
also cited the DAS1700's interchangeable
measurement boards, which let customers configure the recorder to meet their
requirements. "These boards allow for up
to 72 input channels, a maximum input
voltage of 1000 V, and the 1 MS/s on up
to six channels simultaneously," he said.
"For applications that require a higher
number of input channels, our DAS240BAT can be configured with up to 200
analog inputs."

Applications
Ang at Keysight said the company's
DAQ systems are used across multiple
industries for product characterization
and validation, product manufacturing
testing, and process monitoring. Until
recently, he said, Keysight standalone
DAQ systems were used as data-logging
systems capturing static data. However,
he added, Keysight's recently introduced
DAQM909A four-channel simultaneous
digitizer module for use in the DAQ970
Series enables new dynamic data acquisition applications such as mechanical vibration analysis, acoustic analysis, and
dynamic AC/DC power analysis.
When asked about trends, Ang said,
"With the proliferation of IoT solutions
across all industries, we have seen requirements for new solution form factors, improved connectivity to the cloud
for data storage and analysis, improved
battery-analysis tools, and lower cost RF
measurement solutions." He also cited a
trend toward including data acquisition
into simulation models to improve model
performance.
Iversen, Burrows, and Bassett said
NI's DAQ portfolio addresses applications ranging from low-channel-count
systems for quick measurements to highdensity, distributed, and custom systems.
"Because our hardware is modular, users
can tailor their setup to meet their needs
across different applications," they said.
"FlexLogger software provides the sensor
configuration, logging options, and event
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