Analog Input Examples :: Getting Started with Analog Input (Data Acquisition Toolbox™)

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Analog Input Examples

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Basic Steps for Acquiring Data Acquiring Data with a Sound Card Acquiring Data with a National Instruments Board

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Acquiring Data with a National Instruments Board

Basic Steps for Acquiring Data

This section illustrates how to perform basic data acquisition tasks using analog input subsystems and the Data Acquisition Toolbox software. For most data acquisition applications, you must follow these basic steps:

Install and connect the components of your data acquisition hardware. At a minimum, this involves connecting a sensor to a plug-in or external data acquisition device.
Configure your data acquisition session. This involves creating a device object, adding channels, setting property values, and using specific functions to acquire data.
Analyze the acquired data using MATLAB.

Simple data acquisition applications using a sound card and a National Instruments board are given below.

Acquiring Data with a Sound Card

Suppose you must verify that the fundamental (lowest) frequency of a tuning fork is 440 Hz. To perform this task, you will use a microphone and a sound card to collect sound level data. You will then perform a fast Fourier transform (FFT) on the acquired data to find the frequency components of the tuning fork. The setup for this task is shown below.

Configuring the Data Acquisition Session

For this example, you will acquire 1 second of sound level data on one sound card channel. Because the tuning fork vibrates at a nominal frequency of 440 Hz, you can configure the sound card to its lowest sampling rate of 8000 Hz. Even at this lowest rate, you should not experience any aliasing effects because the tuning fork will not have significant spectral content above 4000 Hz, which is the Nyquist frequency. After you set the tuning fork vibrating and place it near the microphone, you will trigger the acquisition one time using a manual trigger.

You can run this example by typing daqdoc4_1 at the MATLAB Command Window.

Create a device object — Create the analog input object AI for a sound card. The installed adaptors and hardware IDs are found with daqhwinfo.
```
AI = analoginput('winsound');
```
Add channels — Add one channel to AI.
```
chan = addchannel(AI,1);
```
Configure property values — Assign values to the basic setup properties, and create the variables blocksize and Fs, which are used for subsequent analysis. The actual sampling rate is retrieved because it might be set by the engine to a value that differs from the specified value.
```
duration = 1; %1 second acquisition
set(AI,'SampleRate',8000)
ActualRate = get(AI,'SampleRate');
set(AI,'SamplesPerTrigger',duration*ActualRate)
set(AI,'TriggerType','Manual')
blocksize = get(AI,'SamplesPerTrigger');
Fs = ActualRate;
```
Acquire data — Start AI, issue a manual trigger, and extract all data from the engine. Before trigger is issued, you should begin inputting data from the tuning fork to the sound card.
```
start(AI)
trigger(AI)
wait(AI,duration + 1)
```
The wait function pauses MATLAB until either the acquisition completes or the time-out elapses (whichever comes first). If the time-out elapses, an error occurs. Adding 1 second to the duration allows some margin for the time-out.
```
data = getdata(AI);
```
Clean up — When you no longer need AI, you should remove it from memory and from the MATLAB workspace.
```
delete(AI)
clear AI
```

Analyzing the Data

For this example, analysis consists of finding the frequency components of the tuning fork and plotting the results. To do so, the function daqdocfft was created. This function calculates the FFT of data, and requires the values of SampleRate and SamplesPerTrigger as well as data as inputs.

[f,mag] = daqdocfft(data,Fs,blocksize);

daqdocfft outputs the frequency and magnitude of data, which you can then plot. daqdocfft is shown below.

function [f,mag] = daqdocfft(data,Fs,blocksize)
%    [F,MAG]=DAQDOCFFT(X,FS,BLOCKSIZE) calculates the FFT of X
%    using sampling frequency FS and the SamplesPerTrigger
%    provided in BLOCKSIZE

xfft = abs(fft(data));

% Avoid taking the log of 0.
index = find(xfft == 0);
xfft(index) = 1e-17;

mag = 20*log10(xfft);
mag = mag(1:floor(blocksize/2));
f = (0:length(mag)-1)*Fs/blocksize;
f = f(:);

The results are given below.

plot(f,mag)
grid on 
ylabel('Magnitude (dB)')
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
title('Frequency Components of Tuning Fork')

The plot shows the fundamental frequency around 440 Hz and the first overtone around 880 Hz. A simple way to find actual fundamental frequency is

[ymax,maxindex]= max(mag);
maxfreq = f(maxindex)
maxfreq =
   441

The answer is 441 Hz.

Note The fundamental frequency is not always the frequency component with the largest amplitude. A more sophisticated approach involves fitting the observed frequencies to a harmonic series to find the fundamental frequency.

Acquiring Data with a National Instruments Board

Suppose you must verify that the nominal frequency of a sine wave generated by a function generator is 1.00 kHz. To perform this task, you will input the function generator signal into a National Instruments board. You will then perform a fast Fourier transform (FFT) on the acquired data to find the nominal frequency of the generated sine wave. The setup for this task is shown below.

Configuring the Data Acquisition Session

For this example, you will acquire 1 second of data on one input channel. The board is set to a sampling rate of 10 kHz, which is well above the frequency of interest. After you connect the input signal to the board, you will trigger the acquisition one time using a manual trigger.

You can run this example by typing daqdoc4_2 at the MATLAB Command Window.

Create a device object — Create the analog input object AI for a National Instruments board. The installed adaptors and hardware IDs are found with daqhwinfo.
```
AI = analoginput('nidaq','Dev1');
```
Add channels — Add one channel to AI.
```
chan = addchannel(AI,0);
```
Configure property values — Assign values to the basic setup properties, and create the variables blocksize and Fs, which are used for subsequent analysis. The actual sampling rate is retrieved because it might be set by the engine to a value that differs from the specified value.
```
duration = 1; %1 second acquisition
set(AI,'SampleRate',10000)
ActualRate = get(AI,'SampleRate');
set(AI,'SamplesPerTrigger',duration*ActualRate)
set(AI,'TriggerType','Manual')
blocksize = get(AI,'SamplesPerTrigger');
Fs = ActualRate;
```
Acquire data — Start AI, issue a manual trigger, and extract all data from the engine. Before trigger is issued, you should begin inputting data from the function generator into the data acquisition board.
```
start(AI)
trigger(AI)
wait(AI,duration + 1)
```
The wait function pauses MATLAB until either the acquisition completes or the time-out elapses (whichever comes first). If the time-out elapses, an error occurs. Adding 1 second to the duration allows some margin for the time-out.
```
data = getdata(AI);
```
Clean up — When you no longer need AI, you should remove it from memory and from the MATLAB workspace.
```
delete(AI)
clear AI
```

Analyzing the Data

For this experiment, analysis consists of finding the frequency of the input signal and plotting the results. You can find the signal frequency with daqdocfft.

[f,mag] = daqdocfft(data,Fs,blocksize);

This function, which is shown in Analyzing the Data, calculates the FFT of data, and requires the values of SampleRate and SamplesPerTrigger as well as data as inputs. daqdocfft outputs the frequency and magnitude of data, which you can then plot.

The results are given below.

plot(f,mag)
grid on 
ylabel('Magnitude (dB)')
xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
title('Frequency Output by Function Generator')

This plot shows the nominal frequency around 1000 Hz. A simple way to find actual frequency is shown below.

[ymax,maxindex]= max(mag);
maxindex
maxindex =
   994

The answer is 994 Hz.

Acquiring Data

Evaluating the Analog Input Object Status

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