Nuts and Volts - December 2016

ICON BASED DATA

ACQUISITION SOFTWARE

Measurement Computing Corporation (MCC) has now released DASYLab 2016. DASYLab is a data acquisition software application that allows users to configure custom acquisition, analysis, and control applications in minimal time and without programming. New enhancements include a new state machine module, support for double-precision data, larger block sizes, and more.

DASYLab boasts a very short learning curve. Users interactively develop PC based data acquisition applications by simply attaching functional icons. Real time displays, math and analysis, and control functions are all included.

DASYLab can be used with Measurement Computing, Data Translation, and IOtech brand DAQ devices from MCC, as well as hardware from other suppliers. A free evaluation version of DASYLab is available for download.

New features include: • State Machine Module. Easily set up sophisticated sequences more easily and efficiently. Users can reorder steps, or insert, delete, or append steps at any position in the state machine.

• Support for Double-Precision Data. Internal data format changed from a 32-bit float to a 64-bit double for data connections between modules. This structure enhancement supports high resolution measurements and significantly increases accuracy.

• Larger Block Sizes. Block sizes up to 1 ms are now supported.

Support of larger block sizes increases the resolution and accuracy of block-related operations such as FFT.

• Support for TDM/TDMS File Format . Users can read/write National Instruments (NI) technical data management (TDM) files and TDM streaming (TDMS) files. TDMS files combine the benefits of several data storage formats — ASCII, binary, XML, and database — into one file format.

• Enhanced DASYLab DDF File Format. DASYLab 2016 can read and store double-precision data. DASYLab saves all data channels that contain measurement data, TTL signals, histogram data, and calculation and scaling results in a binary DASYLab data format (.ddf) file.

• Support for Python 2. 7. 10. The Script module supports Python

2. 7. 10 and many Python libraries in the public domain.

• Support for Virtual Time Bases.

Users can refer data sources such as a switch, slider, or generator module to a virtual time base, and then change the synchronization to the real time base for all modules at once.

• Support for Windows® 10/8/7

32/64-bit.

Current users of DASYLab should contact Measurement Computing about upgrade options for their current version of DASYLab. Pricing begins at $499 with the DASYLab Lite version.