gEDA-user: Re: Looking for a project

[Kai-Martin Knaak <kmk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:29:44 -0400, al davis wrote:

> How about lab test equipment.  There is a real need for simple stuff
> that is too simple to market at the high prices the big instrument
> companies need to charge.  The kind of equipment you need in a home lab.
>  Like Heathkit used to make.

I'd vote for a floating, differntial input preamplifier for the 
oscilloscopes. This avoids the notorious ground loops that pick up all 
kinds of noise. An optional, decent amplification will be handy too. 
Sometimes analog signals are just too tiny to emerge from the input noise 
of the scope. The main benefit is the ability to measure floating voltages 
not referenced to common ground potential.

As it happens, this device is on my todo list at my university job: Every 
lab in the institute is supposed to be furnished with one of these little 
gadgets. I think, I am in a position to decide that this design is going 
to be GPLed. But don't hold your breath as it is in the nice-to-have 
section of the todo list.

 
> Another real need is for the hardware side of computer instrumentation.
> Something like the commercial product "Labview".  We have most of the
> software.  We are lacking the hardware.

There is a project called comedi which aims to provide a common linux 
interface to all the A/D converter cards on the market. 
 ---> http://www.comedi.org/
This is a long lived project with roots back in the early nineties. The 
list of supported cards is quite impressive. I successfully used comedi to 
read from an National Instruments card PCI-6071E. NI was a let down. They 
promised a linux driver but delivered a proof of concept piece of 
software that could not access the features I needed...

Open source A/D hardware should come with a comedi driver.

---<(kaimartin)>---
-- 
Kai-Martin Knaak
http://lilalaser.de/blog



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