Data Acquisition Toolbox

Making Quality Measurements

For most data acquisition applications, you need to measure the signal produced by a sensor at a specific rate.

In many cases, the sensor signal is a voltage level that is proportional to the physical phenomena of interest (for example, temperature, pressure, or acceleration). If you are measuring slowly changing (quasi-static) phenomena like temperature, a slow sampling rate usually suffices. If you are measuring rapidly changing (dynamic) phenomena like vibration or acoustic measurements, a fast sampling rate is required.

To make high-quality measurements, you should follow these rules:

• Maximize the precision and accuracy
• Minimize the noise
• Match the sensor range to the A/D range

Transferring Data from Hardware to System Memory

Accuracy and Precision