Mission critical processes generally require monitoring and control to be performed in “real-time”. This means measurements must be taken, analysed and acted upon fast enough for the application.

For example when monitoring water level in a reservoir, the sample between intervals can be several minutes or even hours because the volume of water changes quite slowly. However bearing temperature on a gas turbine can change very quickly when they start to wear, and action is needed in milliseconds to prevent a very expensive failure.

Solution Overview

DAPL is a software system running on each Data Acquisition Processor board, supporting all acquisition, transfer, and configuration control functions. It does this consistently by enforcing a stable, uniform software architecture.

A much faster processing time achieved by the on-board processor and DAPL operating software, enables the DAP boards to perform real-time control and calculations such as FFT and FIR filtering on-boards, leaving the PC for other functions.

Equipment used in above system:
• Industrial computer
• DAP (Data Acquisition Processor)
• Expansion and signal conditioning hardware
• DAPTools software for control and processing
• C++ software for presentation
• 19” rackmount Enclosure

Amplicon’s real-time data acquisition systems can be built for just 8 measurement channels, or expanded to 512 analog inputs, 128 digital inputs and over 1000 output channels. The modular design means systems can be supplied for a few channels and expanded at a later date. Signal conditioning is available to suit a various process signals including voltage, current, temperature and strain gauges.