DEVELOPMENT OF DEVICE DRIVER AND ASSOCIATED INSTRUMENTATION FOR DATA ACQUISITION USING PC

Abstract

The easy availability of personal computers has revolutionized the area of automated measurement and control of experiments. In olden times the experiments were either performed manually or by dedicated instruments incorporating embedded microprocessors. These propriety measurement instruments could perform a specified job in a unique configuration using a program which was stored in. ROM, thus precluding any modification in terms of data acquisition or control of the experiment. The programming ease and falling cost of PC makes them very attractive to be used in automated measurements. Further, the availability of high performance computing software can be used for data management, processing and presentation. As a matter of fact, host of `PCI cards' or USB modules are available in the market at a fraction of the cost of stand alone equipment. Multifunction data acquisition card are the typical examples. Once again the driver details of these cards are propriety in nature and low level control of the operation of these cards is still difficult. Further if one wants develop ones own card, one has to be well versed in writing driver software. It is thus, the aim of this project to look into possibility of some simple statement/s which can perform operations such as read and write from/to a specific location (normally a `port'). Once this data is available in the PC, it can the be inputted to standard software such as MATLAB, Mathematica, etc. for further processing The aim of this dissertation is to develop a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) which provides a useful set of commands for reading and writing to the I/O ports. These commands are consistent between 95/98 and NT/2000/XP. Furthermore, there is no need for the programmer to learn assembly language or muck with kernel mode drivers. Simply link to the Dynamic Link Library (DLL) and call the functions and develop an Instrument for Data Acquisition and implement this Dynamic Link Library (DLL) on this instrument for I/O operation.