National Instruments AT-MIO-16X - Manual (Page 16)

© National Instruments Corporation 1-1 AT-MIO-16X User Manual
Chapter
1
Introduction
This chapter describes the AT-MIO-16X, lists the contents of your
AT-MIO-16X kit, the optional software, and optional equipment, and
explains how to unpack the AT-MIO-16X.
About the AT-MIO-16X
Congratulations on your purchase of the National Instruments
AT-MIO-16X. The AT-MIO-16X is a high-performance,
software-configurable 16-bit DAQ board for laboratory, test and
measurement, and data acquisition and control applications. The
board performs high-accuracy measurements with self-calibration,
high-speed settling to 16 bits, noise as low as 0.8 LSBrms, and a
maximum DNL of ±0.5 LSB. Because of its large FIFOs and
dual-channel DMA, the AT-MIO-16X can achieve high performance,
even when used in environments that may have long interrupt latencies,
such as Windows.
Because off-the-shelf instrumentation amplifiers require 500
µ
sec and
more to settle to 16-bit accuracy at high gains when sampling multiple
channels, National Instruments developed the NI-PGIA. The NI-PGIA,
which is used on the AT-MIO-16X, is an instrumentation amplifier that
settles to 16 bits in 40
µ
s, even when the board is used at its highest gain
of 100.
A common problem with DAQ boards is that you cannot easily
synchronize several measurement functions to a common trigger or
timing event. The AT-MIO-16X has the Real-Time System Integration
(RTSI) bus to solve this problem. The RTSIbus consists of our custom
RTSI bus interface chip and a ribbon cable to route timing and trigger
signals between several functions on one or more DAQ boards in
your PC.
The AT-MIO-16X can interface to the Signal Conditioning eXtensions
for Instrumentation (SCXI) system so that you can acquire over 3,000
analog signals from thermocouples, RTDs, strain gauges, voltage
sources, and current sources. You can also acquire or generate digital