Re: Amplicon 230 alternatives?

Hi there,

We are in a similar situation, although we may be abandoning the PCI230
for other reasons. We have been wondering what to go for, for nearly a
year now!

The old NI E-series cards are very well supported and presumably very
stable with comedi. They are still sold by NI, but they are relatively low
spec and embarrassingly expensive (eg PCI-6040E, 16 channel, 12 bits,
250kS/s is GBP 860).

Measurement Computing do a range of cards that are relatively cheap and
have similar specs to the PCI230 (eg PCI-DAS1000, 16 ch, 12 bits, 250kS/s
is US $349). I have to stress I have no experience of these cards, but
they seem well supported by comedi. I think for my particular application
they ended up being unsuitable, perhaps it was something to do with
triggering limitations, I can't remember. Probably worth a look, though.

NI released their new M-series cards about a year ago, and after a lot of
hassling, arm-twisting, sending cards back for refunds etc they released
the register-level information required to write comedi drivers, and have
since been very co-operative. Comedi driver development started
mid-December, and I gather there is basic AI control (and possibly more?).
You need the CVS version of comedi, and I guess further driver development
is on-going. (NI produce their own linux driver... I tried their first
attempt, DAQmx Base, and found it unusable because of silly 3-second
set-up delays and only worked with 32-bit kernels; I haven't tried their
latest version, release mid-December, called DAQmx. My instinct would be
to stick with comedi, but I thought I should mention alternatives in case
you needed an interim solution).

Once these cards are successfully fully supported by comedi, they probably
are a very good bet for replacement cards for the Amplicon PCI230. E.g. NI
PCI-6221 (16 bits, 16AI, 24DIO, 2AO, 16ch, 250kS/s) is GBP 345.

We are fortunate to have access to a couple of posh M-series cards
(PCI-6281 and PCI-6132) and (time permitting) should be able to help with
comedi driver testing for these cards shortly.

Cheers,

   Steve.

Dr Steve D. Sharples                    steve.sharples_at_nottingham.ac.uk
                                 http://optics.eee.nottingham.ac.uk/aog
Applied Optics Group
School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK            Fax +44 115 9515616
Office +44 115 95-15386                            Lab +44 115 95-15638

On Thu, 19 Jan 2006, Michael R. Head wrote:

> Hello, I have an amplicon PCI230 which works great with comedi on my
> main PCI bus. I've mentioned before that I need to use it across a
> bridge, but it doesn't seem to work. I've now been tasked with finding
> another PCI data acquisition card that both works with linux and can
> perform similarly (as far as the software API goes) to the PCI230. I
> pretty much just need the 0-5V DAQ features. Any suggestions?
>
> mike
>
> --
> Michael R. Head <burner_at_suppressingfire.org>
> GPG: http://www.suppressingfire.org/~burner/gpg.key.txt [0x4C9DA1D0]
>





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Received on 2006-01-20Z10:39:02