As experts in PC based data acquisition, Amplicon are occasionally asked to provide high speed, real-time data acquisition systems. This means a system that does not rely on a commercial operating system such as Windows to take and process measurements. One example of this type of system is used to monitor various internal signals in specialised power supplies, which are used to drive a proton accelerator.

The solution for this particular system had to be able to monitor the following signals at different sampling speeds and log all the results to disk.

16 channels: 4-20mA @ 500kS/s
16 channels: 0-50V @ 500kS/s
4 channels: 0-50V @ 2MS/s
32 channels: Temperature sensors @ 25kS/s

All the channels had to be measured and logged to disk for a period of thirty minutes at the correct sampling rates.

Amplicon have a data acquisition processor (DAP) based system in our range, which uses an on-board processor and real-time operating system. All the control and measurements are controlled by the DAP on a PC card, after which data is transferred to the PC for storage on its hard disk. The data can be analysed and displayed later by using Windows based software.

The DAP system is a modular design, able to be expanded to suit small or large channel counts, and sample at high speeds in real-time. In this system we used four computers to handle the high data rates, which were linked together and controlled by one master PC. Each computer housed one DAP and the workload was divided up to ensure best efficiency.

We provided signal conditioning in 19” rack-mount enclosures to measure the different signal levels and convert them into suitable signals for the data acquisition processors, which have a maximum input signal of 10V.