NI debuts five low-cost digital, analog data acquisition devices

Austin, TX—National Instruments has introduced five low-cost digital input/output (DI/O) and analog output (AO) boards that offer an affordable and reliable I/O solution, and reportedly set a new price/performance standard for data acquisition and control.

By Control Engineering Staff December 16, 2003

Austin, TX— National Instruments has introduced five low-cost digital input/output (DI/O) and analog output (AO) boards that offer an affordable and reliable I/O solution, and reportedly set a new price/performance standard for data acquisition and control. The new boards deliver NI-DAQmx software technology, as well as superior ease-of-use and performance at a low cost for industrial automation and control, test and measurement, and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) applications. The new boards include:

NI PCI-6509 with industrial 96-channel, 5 V/TTL, bidirectional digital input/output;

NI PCI-6514 with isolated industrial 32 digital input and 32 source digital output;

NI PCI-6515 with isolated industrial 32 digital input, 32 sink digital output;

NI PCI-6722 with eight-channel, 13-bit simultaneous voltage output; and

NI PCI-6723 with 32-channel, 13-bit simultaneous voltage output.

With these new boards, engineers can take advantage of innovative NI-DAQmx software technology that includes automatic code generation for creating applications in NI LabView, C, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and C#. Engineers also can take measurements quickly by using the NI DAQ Assistant feature to guide them to fast, accurate input/output without requiring any programming.

NI-DAQmx also offers multithreading streaming technology that delivers up to 100-times faster I/O throughput for concurrent operations and high-channel-count systems, as well as other advanced features including automatic timing, triggering and synchronization.

NI PCI-6509, NI PCI-6514 and NI PCI-6515 digital I/O boards have features that include programmable power-up states; programmable input filters; digital I/O watchdogs; isolation; and change detection. These features are especially valuable for mission-critical industrial control and test and measurement applications. Engineers can use programmable power-up states on each digital I/O device to configure the initial digital state in software, which ensures safe operation when controlling industrial actuators, such as pumps, valves, motors and relays. Programmable input filters eliminate noise on inputs, remove glitches and spikes, and provide debouncing for digital switches and relays. Digital I/O watchdogs protect against a variety of fault conditions, such as computer and application crashes.

Using the new NI PCI-6722 and NI PCI-6723 high-channel-density voltage output boards, engineers and scientists can spend less money per channel to integrate full-featured AO into their control and test systems. These AO boards lower cost-per-channel to just $31, which is a 70% reduction compared to boards with similar advanced features, such as waveform generation. These AO boards deliver 13-bit static or low-speed waveform generation and are capable of multi-channel simultaneous updates needed in many control and simulation applications. To achieve the flexibility many applications require, these AO boards contain programmable function input (PFI) lines for importing external clocks or triggers, and a RTSI bus to synchronize the boards with complementary PCI products, such as analog input, machine vision, motion controllers or controller area network (CAN).

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editor jmontague@reedbusiness.com