National Instruments Introduces 10 Wi-Fi and Ethernet Data Acquisition Devices

Engineers and scientists can combine NI Wi-Fi DAQ with the NI LabVIEW software platform to meet their wireless structural diagnostic, environmental and machine condition monitoring application needs by reducing cabling costs and increasing flexibility without compromising performance.

National Instruments data acquisition software for LabVIEW, ANSI C/C++ and Visual Basic .NET is used to acquire data from millions of sensors all over the world,” said John Hanks, Vice President of Data Acquisition and Control at National Instruments. “Now with NI Wi-Fi DAQ hardware, developers can add wireless sensor capabilities to new and existing measurement applications without having to learn new software.”

Using the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless networks, the new NI Wi-Fi DAQ devices stream data on each channel at more than 50 kS/s with 24 bits of resolution. Wi-Fi DAQ devices deliver measurement data to a host PC instantaneously for real-time viewing and in-line analysis of dynamic sensor signals. In addition, built-in advanced network authentication methods and 128-bit AES encryption offer the highest commercially available network security and meet the standards defined for use of wireless networks in U.S. government facilities by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Wireless technology extends NI data acquisition hardware and software technology to new distributed and portable measurement applications where wiring is difficult or cost-prohibitive. The flexibility of LabVIEW graphical programming and the ubiquity of Wi-Fi network infrastructure make it easy to incorporate wireless sensor measurements into new or existing PC-based measurement or control systems.

The Wi-Fi and Ethernet DAQ devices are shipped with NI-DAQmx driver software and NI LabVIEW SignalExpress LE, an interactive data-logging software for quickly acquiring, analysing and presenting data with no programming required. The NI-DAQmx driver delivers time-saving features such as the configuration-based NI DAQ Assistant with code generation for both LabVIEW and text-based languages; more than 3,000 measurement examples; device simulation; connection diagrams; and compatibility with LabVIEW, ANSI C/C++, C#, Visual Basic .NET and Visual Basic 6.0.