Hardware advice for 8 channels 100 Khz

[Ignacio Bonafonte]

I need to aquire signals from 8 channels at 100 Khz for about 2 or 3 seconds with external and conditional trigger. I must buy the hardware and I need some advices about what cards to buy.
I have seen NI-4472 and NI-6110(2 sinchronized), which configuration would be better.

I'll also buy a computer only for it. What are the most important features in a computer for acquisition in order to choose it?

Thanks in advance

[L Aguila]

Ignacio,

I suggest you to look at the pci-mio-16e-1 board. You can sample up to 150 Khz per channel(using all eight of them), and you will have a resolution of 12-bit per channel. Nevertheless, the signals will not be sampled simultaneously, but close to it. This would be my suggestion for your application based on the little I know of it.

If you choose the 4472, you will have more resolution per channel (24-bit), and a maximum sampling rate of 102.4 Khz per channel. However, you will be wasting much of the capability of the board because it is designed for analysis of audio and vibrations. Unless you application requires it, you shouldn't go for this one, from my point of view.

I wouldn't recommend you to buy two 6110 because it has the same re
solution (12-bit) as the first one, and the sampling rate overpasses abruptly your needs; that is, 5 Mhz per channel. You would be spending much money, unless you will be using it later for a much bigger and robust application.

Finally, regarding the computer, I would suggest you to buy one that runs fine the OS that it comes along with, like win 2000 or XP. If it does this, it will run the daq acquisition fine. As far as I KNOW, there is nothing specific you should look for in a computer.

Hope this information is helpful.

L Aguila
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[Filipe A.]

Hello;

If you need a sample rate per channel of 100K, you will need a DAQ board that allows a total Sample Rate of 8x100K.

NI has some DAQ boards that can go up to 1.25MSamples/sec. That would be the best fit for your application.

Regarding what computer to buy, there isn't a set of constraints that would prevent NI hardware to work, so you can fell free to choose any computer you feel confortable with.

Hope this helps.
Filipe A.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments