12 June 2006 -- Microstar Laboratories now includes interactive filter design in its DAPstudio measurement software. That means user can build and run applications based on the signal conditioning System (SCS) series with no other data acquisition software required. The field-proven SCS series connects directly to sensors and to one or more specialised DAP boards (iDSC 1816 boards) in one or more PCs to give as many channels as you need of filtered 16bit resolution simultaneously sampled data logged directly to disk.
Commercially available off-the-shelf PCs and associated disk controllers and drives have enough electrical power and enough computing power for a single PC to form a balanced network node with four iDSC 1816 boards and an SCS-32.
A network node like this can continuously log to disk all 32 channels of conditioned anti-aliased data at the full data acquisition rate of 153.6Ksample/s per channel - an overall rate of just under 5Msample/s.
An additional synchronisation board in each PC allows a number of PCs like this on a network to work as a single synchronised system with as many channels as are needed.
An SCS package provides direct connection to sensors, and offers many signal-conditioning services in a single convenient, powerful package.
Before a signal reaches the analogue-to-digital conversion stage on an iDSC 1816 board, it passes through an analogue filter - on each channel - that takes out all frequencies above the Nyquist frequency.
The subsequent digital waveform is therefore free of any alias frequencies that otherwise would corrupt the data.
Onboard intelligence directs digital signal processing of the waveforms corresponding to filter designs created interactively with DAPstudio.
Valid cutoff frequencies fall in the range 2 to 80% of Nyquist.
Above 50% of Nyquist, resulting filters roll off at better than 96dB per quarter-octave.
The SCS and iDSC 1816 hardware costs - excluding PC costs - range from around US $1000 per channel.
DAPstudio measurement software costs US $199.
