Design of a Flexible Data Acquisition and Control System

Abstract

Abstract Automatic data acquisition and control have become an indispensable part of engineering but many data acquisition and control equipments remain relatively inflexible and cumbersome for most engineering applications. Hence, engineers often need to custom design and build their data acquisition and control system to support their in-house automatic testing and monitoring equipment. This project investigates the design fundamentals and guidelines in setting up a flexible data acquisition and control system. A flexible data acquisition and control system (FDACS) is defined as one which possesses such characteristics as the ease of implementation, the ease of upgrading system’s capability (e.g. data volume and control channels) and the ability for information sharing. An experimental data acquisition system is used as the platform to facilitate the study. It consists of an IBM compatible personal computer, a remote host microprocessor and seven signal processors. Using this implementation, the system is able to provide up to 28 digital I/O lines, 28 analog input lines, 42 digital output lines and an average execution time per instruction of 1 ms.