National Instruments intros X Series DAQ device

National Instruments announced NI X Series multifunction data acquisition (DAQ)
devices for USB. USB X Series devices integrate high-performance analog
measurement and control channels, digital I/O and counter/timers onto a single
plug-and-play device. Scientists can use these devices for a wide variety of
portable test, measurement and data-logging applications. The devices include up
to 32 analog inputs, four analog outputs, 48 digital I/O lines and four
counters. The eight new devices range from 500 kS/s multiplexed AI to 2
MS/s/channel simultaneous sampling AI.

NI LabVIEW graphical programming makes it easy for engineers and scientists
to develop completely custom test and measurement applications for USB X Series
using intuitive graphical icons and wires that resemble a flowchart. LabVIEW
2010 simplifies data logging and analysis with a new technical data management
streaming option within the NI DAQ Assistant and the ability to export data from
a waveform graph to Microsoft Excel or NI DIAdem for post processing. These
devices use the same multi-threaded NI-DAQmx driver software as other National
Instruments DAQ devices, making it easy to port LabVIEW or text-based code from
previous applications for use with X Series. The devices include two key
technologies that make them as powerful as they are easy to use: NI-STC3
technology for advanced timing and triggering and NI Signal Streaming for
high-speed, bi-directional data streaming.

At the core of all USB, PCI Express and PXI Express X Series devices is
NI-STC3 timing and synchronization technology, which coordinates the timing and
triggering of the analog, digital and counter subsystems. NI-STC3 technology
provides X Series devices with independent timing engines for the onboard analog
and digital I/O subsystems, making it possible for analog and digital I/O to
execute independently at different rates or together with synchronization. X
Series devices include four enhanced 32-bit counters for frequency, pulse-width
modulation (PWM) and encoder operations, as well as a new 100 MHz time base that
can generate analog and digital sampling rates with five times better resolution
than previous devices.