While traditional DAQs have played a detrimental role in the field of data acquisition, in recent years we have seen a surge of products that not only have surpassed in functionality and availability what was considered to be top-of-the-line just a few years back, but they also have added much more functionality at a lower price.
Among these newcomers, one family of products that has clearly gone above and beyond is the Arduino and Arduino-compatible boards and shields.
Digilent, which was recently acquired by National Instruments, produces higher-end boards compatible with the Arduino family of products. Although they are mainly produced to be utilized as microcontrollers, the fact of the matter is that they not only pack the capabilities of a DAQ, but they also bring many more functionalities that eliminate the requirement for extra hardware to complete a given job. We have examined serial communications, voltage manipulation, analog digital inputs and outputs, PWM, and an example...
