Budget DAQ Options

[ZoomBot]

I am new to LabVeiw and looking for a budget option under $200 to run a test stand at my house.  I have a audrino micro and click PLC available for the project plus a laptop with Windows 7.  The idea is to have a test stand ready a potentiometer to get basic force measures similar to a load cell.  I need a DAQ to some how connect to and record values.  I may also want to add moving components in future like running a train like device similar to crash test simulator.

[santo_13]

MCC DAQ and LabJack have a bunch of low cost options.

Can you describe more about your project? what exactly do you plan to test? list of sensors you would like to interface with?

found a bunch more using Google,

https://www.dataq.com/data-acquisition/usb/

https://daqifi.com/

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/cheap-data-acquisition-device/

[ZoomBot]

It's hard to explain what I am trying to do is determine lift and drag on boats of different designs. Like in video

https://youtu.be/W69nqyfVCTM?si=M-ZwKKgd_ka08jTX

But my boats don't have motors so I am going to build a simulator that either moves the boats using a tracked rail device or moves the water by a pump.  I am also using the stand to get familiar with DAQ as I need it for work and controlling plcs there ...I don't have a full hardware list yet as I think it would depend on DAQ to some extent on what it can read?

[FlybyWire]

I was looking into Labview home projects as well and saw that some people seem to use Arduinos as DAQs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYvhTv3bsPI

I don't know how hard that is though to get going still reading up on it...Might go with LabJack or a 6009/6008.

[LabJackSupport]

You may already have everything you need with the Arduino and PLC. As long as the PLC has some analog inputs, you should generally be able to find sensors that can interface with either a PLC or Arduino. The selection might come down to what you want to get out of the project. We have a blog post with some broad comparisons between Arduino, PLC, and LabJack:

https://labjack.com/blogs/news/how-does-labjack-compare-to-developing-on-a-plc-arduino-or-raspberry-...

The only device LabJack sells that would work for the under $200 requirement is our U3. All of our software is free. We support a high level LabVIEW interface and examples. Our Windows logging software LJLogUD was made in LabVIEW and the source is publicly available with our examples, however the LJLogUD source probably has more/different functionality than you need:

https://labjack.com/products/u3-hv

https://labjack.com/pages/support/?doc=%2Fsoftware-driver%2Fexample-codewrappers%2Flabview-for-ud-wi...

Many PLCs support serial communications through protocols such as Modbus RTU. LabVIEW supports some interfaces that could be used for serial communications:

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019XKkSAM&l=en-US

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YGf8CAG&l=en-US

I am not sure about all of your communication options between LabVIEW and an Arduino. You should at least have access to a serial port that you could use to send data to a COM port on your computer:

https://www.instructables.com/How-to-connect-Arduino-to-a-PC-through-the-serial-/

If I were setting up a home project for fun and I was running a tight budget, I would consider using an Arduino and some sensors that can send data to the Arduino via serial protocols such as I2C or SPI. Serial protocol communications can be trickier to troubleshoot, especially if you are just starting to use them, but Arduino has some excellent support resources and community-made libraries for serial protocol communications. Sensors that use serial protocol communications are also usually a great bang for your buck. The U3 supports serial protocols like I2C and SPI, but LabJack does not have nearly the same number of sensor specific libraries as Arduino. Logging data in LabVIEW with a U3 should be easier to set up, and it might especially be a hassle to set up logging at higher data rates on an Arduino (if you need higher data rates.)

[santo_13]

---

@ZoomBot wrote:

It's hard to explain what I am trying to do is determine lift and drag on boats of different designs. Like in video

https://youtu.be/W69nqyfVCTM?si=M-ZwKKgd_ka08jTX

But my boats don't have motors so I am going to build a simulator that either moves the boats using a tracked rail device or moves the water by a pump.  I am also using the stand to get familiar with DAQ as I need it for work and controlling plcs there ...I don't have a full hardware list yet as I think it would depend on DAQ to some extent on what it can read?

---

So, the cheapest option is going to be Arduino based. Good thing is that there is LabVIEW hobbyist toolkit that allows you to control Arduino from LabVIEW (requires flashing it with a special firmware that does the comm.,).

If you're going the Arduino route, you need load cells, signal conditioning for the loadcell and for every sensor. If you're not much into electronics, the Adafruit's STEMMA QT, Sparkfun Qwic and Seeed Studio Groove offers a variety of sensors to be easily connected and used.

[wiebe@CARYA]

In stead of a DAQ device, you could buy a I2C converter (or use an Arduino for that) and buy I2C modules. Maybe that counts as a DAQ device?

Esp. pre-build motor control for robotics can be cheap with I2C interface.

You might need to do low level electronics (breadboards, PCBs) to get a I2C AI\AO\DI\DO going. But it will be cheap, esp. when you scale up production.