Serial communication

A 1-Wire®, or most probably a 3-wire (signal ground, receive, and transmit), serial over USB accounts for one of the oldest and still most common forms of communication between a device and a data acquisition subsystem (a computer running LabVIEW in our case). Do not forget power and ground wires also. Since data acquisition is our focus in this book, we will somewhat leap over a 1-wire connection but it is worth mentioning that an amazing amount of communication can be achieved on a 1-wire serial connection. For example, a 1-wire digital temperature sensor, DS18B20, will send a unique serial number along with the actual data requested every time a set of data is transmitted. So you may use several of these temperature sensors (even 50, if you need them all) and still distinguish the exact pair of data and serial number for each sensor, all by using only one digital serial bus pin. As simple and friendly serial communication is, it is one of the slowest forms of communication...