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DAQ Selection
As one of the most costly items in the system, there is clearly a strong motivation to know what the operational requirements are. This page may be a starting point for the decision of which data acquisition board to utilize, but the application will drive the final choice.
There are two primary hardware considerations: sampling rate and ADC resolution. The sampling rate defines how rapidly the computer can record a discrete signal point, and the ADC resolution determines how precise those individual points are.
To utilize the LabView software that is part of this project, a NI DAQ should be used. A single NI-6361 would be sufficient, but a second DAQ can be useful to have simultaneous measurements.
The NI DAQs (generally) have a single analog to digital converter, so if multiple channels are measured, they all share the same digitizer. As a result there is appreciable cross-talk between the channels if they are sampled simultaneously. Instead of simultaneously sampling, we run each sequence multiple times each time sampling a different channel.
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The DAQ which has been excellent is the NI-USB-6363 which has 2MS/s and 16 bit ADC resolution. This should have all the capacity necessary for research projects that the MPS is designed for. This device costs ~$2500.
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There are also options outside of National Instruments. For instance, the Red Pitaya is an open-source device that has gotten positive reviews. It has a high sampling rate (125MS/s) at 14 bits of resolution, and low cost (~$300-800) depending on if you are in academia and which version you get. It also works with MATLAB and LabVIEW, though I have never tried operating the MPS system with this.