microDAQ Control Centre Sample Clauses

microDAQ Control Centre. The microDAQ Control Centre runs from a separate shortcut and is used to setup and control several instances of microDAQX. This is particularly useful when the need arises to log data from several scanners at the same time. Each scanner can be connected to a microDAQ and the control centre would be used to connect instances of microDAQX to the microDAQs and acquire all the data into one log file for review in Excel (or similar). Note there are a few pre-requisites when using the microDAQ Control Centre. • The only communications method used is Ethernet (for both Data and Commands). RS232 is not allowed, simply due to its slow speed and the nature of its single peer- to-peer bus. • The streaming data rate is the same for all microDAQs being controlled via the Control Centre. It is not possible (nor is it feasible) to acquire and log at different rates between the set of microDAQs being controlled. • Likewise any hardware trigger pulse is sent to all microDAQs at the same time. Again it is not possible to trigger different microDAQs at different rates. • The chosen samples per cycle setting is applied to all microDAQs being controlled by the Control Centre, for logging synchronicity • If using the combined logging facility (see later) the logfile will be written as a binary file which must be run through the conversion function before it can be viewed in Excel, etc. This because combined logfiles can get very large, very quickly – the quickest and most efficient way of storing this data is in a binary file on the PC. Depending on the circumstances, it may even be necessary to run a RAMdisk on the PC and log the combined data to that because writing to RAM is even quicker than writing to a hard disk. This all depends on the PC system being used and is beyond the scope of this document. • The more microDAQs being connected together, coupled with higher data acuqitision rate, the more likely it is that TCP packets could be missed due to collisions on the network. Chell therefore advise that if high data rates are to be used then the microDAQs should be connected to the PC on a dedicated network via a high speed managed network switch that supports the store and forward feature – the larger the packet buffer the better!!. This should mean all data acquired will get through to the PC without packet collisions and loss of data. • At very high data rates with lots of microDAQX instances, it is possible that there may be too many Windows GDI (drawing) updates going ...