PC based electrical test equipment?

[Glacern]

Just wondering if anyone here knew of any good PC-based products such as oscilloscopes and function generators, perhaps in the form of PCI cards. Do such things exist? If so, how are they priced in comparison to stand-alone units? Thanks.

[Al_The_Man]

I have a USB storage scope from these guys www.syscompdesign.com
They have some limitations over a real time scope, but they are handy as capture storage after a set level etc, or as a chart recorder.
Al.

[kreutz]

Originally Posted by Glacern Just wondering if anyone here knew of any good PC-based products such as oscilloscopes and function generators, perhaps in the form of PCI cards. Do such things exist? If so, how are they priced in comparison to stand-alone units? Thanks.

National Instruments http://sine.ni.com/nifn/cds/view/mai...id/1036/ap/daq

[Glacern]

Thanks for the links.

I've got a friend who uses a lot of NI stuff at his work place. Good stuff to say the least, albeit a bit pricey.

I'll look into both. Thanks again.

[vger]

The NI (National Instruments) stuff is good. The instruments are "virtual" in the machine and completely configurable. Meters, indicators, switches, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, math functions, logic functions..... and on and on.... you can often pick up NI stuff on Ebay. The software is usually the pricy part. Then there are boards that have digital I/O and analog I/O, servo inputs, thermocouple inputs, etc etc... a person could build a complete machine control in the software "visually" complete with control panel and DRO's. Their flagship software is called Labview and is really really really cool stuff.... website is at http://www.ni.com/ take a look