Modern digital technology and a little imagination have led to today’s most popular devices, like the MP3 player — a tiny digital music player that you can carry in your shirt pocket, and yet which can hold countless songs, TV shows, and movies. And they have led to cell phones that are serving as cameras and PDAs. Thankfully, this same technology “push” from the last 10 years has had its effect on the data acquisition system, albeit in a slightly more serious way.

Figure 1. Convergence of analog sensors, video, CAN, and GPS inputs.

Thankfully, the convergence of emerging technologies has enabled a real evolution in data acquisition instruments, unlocking their potential to do more than ever before. These evolutionary, or revolutionary, steps include the following technologies:

• Digital video recording.
• GPS receivers and timing technology.
• Digital data buses, such as CAN for automotive, and PCM for aerospace.

Imagine the case of an automotive test engineer, who finds himself faced with recording all manner of analog sensors in order to test his car’s performance under a variety of conditions, but who also can benefit greatly from recording hundreds of parameters from the car’s CAN bus. And GPS can provide exact position information, which can be used to calculate displacement, velocity, and even acceleration if enough time axis resolution is available. Video cameras can be used to monitor and record various test conditions, putting the data into context.