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Acquire Data Using NI FieldDAQ Device

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This example shows how to acquire data from an NI™ FieldDAQ device.

Discover Analog Input Devices

To discover a device that supports input measurements, access the device in the table returned by the daqlist command. This example uses a NI FD-11603 device. This device has two banks, each with 4 channels. Channel 0 of Bank 1 is connected to a frequency generator that produces a 1 kHz sine wave (1 Vpp centered around 0.5V).

d = daqlist("ni")
d=10×4 table
           DeviceID                        Description                  Model             DeviceInfo       
    _______________________    ___________________________________    __________    _______________________

    "Dev1"                     "National Instruments(TM) USB-6351"    "USB-6351"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FD11603-1D3BB09-Bank1"    "National Instruments(TM) FD-11603"    "FD-11603"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FD11603-1D3BB09-Bank2"    "National Instruments(TM) FD-11603"    "FD-11603"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ1-Bank1"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11603"    "FD-11603"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ1-Bank2"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11603"    "FD-11603"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ2-Bank1"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11613"    "FD-11613"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ3-Bank1"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11634"    "FD-11634"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ3-Bank2"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11634"    "FD-11634"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ4-Bank1"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11637"    "FD-11637"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]
    "FieldDAQ4-Bank2"          "National Instruments(TM) FD-11637"    "FD-11637"    [1×1 daq.ni.DeviceInfo]

Create a DataAcquisition and Add Analog Input Channels

Create a DataAcquisition, set the Rate property (the default is 1000 scans per second), and add analog input channels using addinput.

dq = daq("ni");
dq.Rate = 20000;
addinput(dq,"FD11603-1D3BB09-Bank1","ai0","Voltage");
Warning: Added channel does not support on-demand operations: only clocked operations are allowed.

Acquire Data For a Specified Duration

Use read to acquire multiple scans, blocking MATLAB execution until all the data requested is acquired. The acquired data is returned as a timetable with width equal to the number of channels and height equal to the number of scans.

% Acquire data for one second at 20000 scans per second.
data = read(dq, seconds(1));

Plot the Acquired Data

t = data.Time;
v = data.Variables;
n = 200;
plot(t(1:n), v(1:n));
ylabel("Voltage (V)")

Acquire Specified Number of Scans

data = read(dq, 200);
plot(data.Time, data.Variables);
ylabel("Voltage (V)")