Summary

From a 1-wire® serial communication to a GPIB connection cable with at least 24 wires, to a USB to Serial connector, and so on, the choice of using one particular connecting wire or cable over another one or, on the other hand, the availability of certain bus on a computer or a standalone test system may vary depending on at what stage of development (R&D, development, or production) we may be. The choice of connection cable/adapter device will also will have a decisive effect on the data transfer rate. The data transfer rate could be the single deciding factor with which a connection bus may have to be used. Clearly, a GPIB data transfer rate is much higher than a simple serial data transfer rate. The format of the data acquired (numbers, text, wave form, and so on) is also fundamental to data acquisition. We will look at I2C, 1-wire or 3 wire Serial, RS232, GPIB and USB, and, in particular, virtual serial port(s) using a USB connection in upcoming chapters.