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Mosaic embedded designs » Embedded applications » High resolution data acquisition High resolution data acquisitionWhat is data acquisition?Many instrument applications require monitoring of analog signals, therefore they need a way to acquire and process data. Data acquisition involves sampling analog signals from various sensors, and converting these electrical signals into digital values, that can be displayed, analyzed, manipulated, and stored by a computer. Data acquisition is performed by analog to digital (A/D or ATD) converters. The resolution of an ATD converter is specified in bits. For example, an 8-bit ATD converts an analog signal into one of 28 or 256 discrete digital numbers, while a 10-bit ATD converts an analog signal into one of 210 or 1024 discrete digital numbers. Mosaic's data acquisition controllers offer high-resolution measurements.The converter measures the input voltage with a specified resolution. The resolution is the granularity with which the measurement is performed. It can be specified as a number of bits or as a voltage increment. For example, an A/D converter with only 1 bit of resolution and a 5 Volt input range would classify all voltages from 0 to just under 2.5 Volts as the digital value 0, and voltages from 2.5 Volts to 5 Volts as the digital value 1. This converter would have a resolution equal to 1 bit, corresponding to 2.5 Volts per count. An A/D converter measures the input voltage with a specified accuracy. The accuracy tells how close the measured value is to the actual voltage. A typical 10 bit ATD converter is accurate to within plus or minus one least significant bit, equivalent to plus or minus 1/1024 of the input range. Mosaic embedded controllers host high resolution analog to digital converters to address a wide variety of instrumentation and control applications. The controllers based on Motorola 68HC11 processor (such as the QCard and QScreen) include an 8-channel 8-bit analog to digital (A/D) converter that is built into the 68HC11 processor chip. The PDQ Board based on Freescale HCS12 processor hosts 16 channels of 10-bit analog to digital conversion. There are two A/D converter systems on the HCS12 processor, and each converter is controlled and configured by pre-coded driver routines in the operating system.
Need to expand your data acquisition system?For applications that require versatile high resolution measurements, we offer tiny but powerful expansion modules which you can mix and match to build your custom off-the-shelf data acquisition system. Our controllers can host up to 8 expansion modules called Wildcards to boost data acquisition and interface to different sensors and actuators.
All Mosaic controllers and expansion modules come complete with powerful yet easy-to-use data acquisition software that allows you to collect, process, analyse, export, and display data. Home | Site Map | Products | Resources | Order | About Us High Resolution Data Acquisition | 24-Bit Data Acquisition | A/D Converter | Analog to Digital Converters | Data Acquisition Boards |