MULTIFUNCTION CARD 4 analog input, 4 counters, 16 analog output

[Waqar123]

Hi,

     I am looking for a multifunction data acquisition card with following features,

1. At least 4 counters
2. At least 4 analog inputs
3. At least 16 analog outputs
4. PCI or PCIe or USB

Can somebody give me an idea about the NI card of equivalent specs.

What will be the effect on data acquisition if i use two differernt cards?? e.g. if one has counter, analog output on one card and analog inputs only on the other card. Will there be switching time issues between two cards during selection in software such as LabView? especially when every milli sec is very much important for you.

Regards,

WAQAR

[crossrulz]

You will likely need to go with multiple cards.  The most counters I've seen on a DAQ card is 2.  There might be cards with more, but I don't know about them.  I find that NI's search in their Data Acquisition site is pretty good (http://www.ni.com/data-acquisition/).

You can setup the cards to use the same sample clock and some triggers.  If using PCI(e), you will need to hook up the RTSI cables.

[John_P1 · Accepted solution]

You might want to look at a cDAQ chassis.

1.  All of the newer cDAQ chassis have 4 counters on the backplane.  They are accessible by means of any "parallel module" (basically any digital I/O module with 8 lines or less, the 9401 or 9402 are pretty standard depending on the connector type you want).

2.  There are a wide variety of analog input modules available for compact DAQ--you'll have to select based on your application (sample rate, accuracy, conditioning, etc.).

3.  For 16 analog outputs you'll probably want to use a 9264.

4.  The 9174 or 9178 use USB, and have 4 and 8 slots for modules respsectively.  

Best Regards,

[Kevin_Price]

If you follow John's advice (always a good idea BTW), it should be pretty easy to share timing signals such as sample clocks among your tasks.  Sharing the timing signals is the most reliable way to sync & correlate your data.

Plan to do buffered tasks that use calls to DAQmx Timing.vi, and plan to configure some of your tasks to use timing signals that are defined in terms of other tasks, i.e., set AO sample clock source = "/cDAQ1/ai/Sampleclock".

-Kevin P

[Waqar123]

Thanks a lot John and Kevin. It really helped me a lot.

Regards,

WAQAR