Design engineers constantly need tools to design and test electronics products from smartphones to biosensors, which requires a regular improvement in their testing tools as circuits and SoCs advance and become more powerful but require less energy.
To help meet that demand, Emerson announced a new USB-based NI mioDAQ (Data Acquisition) device. It delivers up to 16 channels of 20-bit resolution with 1 million simultaneous samples per second. DAQ products have been in use for decades, but have grown smaller and lighter with more powerful features. Emerson’s newest product can sit on a desktop, taking up about one-third the space of a laptop.
Brett Burger, chief solution marketer for Emerson, described the NI mioDAQ approach as best-in-class, offering four versions of the device that range from about $1,000 to $3,500 each. They are already shipping to some of the company’s 30,000 customers. Emerson completed its $8 billion acquisition of National Instruments (NI) in October 2023, and Emerson is keeping the NI branding on some products.
“It’s an all-in-one device, the Swiss army knife-kind of measurement,” he said in an interview.
One feature for easy set-up is a QR code on the back of the device to send an engineer to a Youtube video to explain setup. A USB-C connector is provided.
Engineers can use it to measure electrical signals from a wide variety of sensors or transducers in a debug process. In general DAQs are used to measure a wide range of physical and electrical characteristics, including voltage, current, temperature, pressure, sound and motion.
Emerson’s approach is to allow mioDAQ to connect to a computer where software provides testing data and graphics rather than using a display on the device. Some competitors offer devices with displays in the same testing box that are much larger. Burger demonstrated one mock-up of a plumbing leak sensor, showing its performance on charts and graphs on a connected display that were analyzed via the new NI mioDAQ.
The Emerson hardware features 32 analog input channels, four high-speed analog outputs, 16 digital lines, four counters and guaranteed specs for two-and 10-year calibration cycles. NI mioDAQ devices now support FlexLogger Lite data logging software and the integrate with Emerson NI LabView software and the LabView+ suite for lab and manufacturing systems. Engineers using existing NI DAQ hardware can see backward compatibility, the company said.
Engineers are ideally able to debug complex designs early in the development cycle to reduce their time and costs, Burger said. The mioDAQ can measure a variety of signals including high-speed voltage up to 1 million simultaneous samples per second, voltage drops, battery cell voltages, power rails and encoders. It can also generate and control digital output and external relays, among others.