Welcome to the World of myDAQ

As a student accustomed to getting ideas, concepts, and techniques from the classroom, you will be delighted to be able use myDAQ with small circuits to explore these ideas in the comfort of your dorm room. Projects such as measuring skin resistance to build a lie detector or using a thermistor to build a passion meter may add some fun to your busy day. Engineers who make measurements and analyze data will be delighted to have a myDAQ as their computer sidekick, ready at any moment to collect more data. Graduate student will be excited about having a personnel data acquisition system to enhance their research projects or explore new research avenues. If you are an educator, myDAQ allows an easy way to bring those special demonstrations into the classroom with just your laptop, myDAQ and a demonstration board. If you are a lab demonstrator, build a demonstration board at home then port it to the laboratory for a pre-lab demonstration. Background In 2003, National Instruments introduced NI ELVIS, a new approach to design, testing, and teaching of electrical circuits. A complete suite of standard test instruments were available on your computer and directly interfaced to a circuit built on a small test bed called NI ELVIS. It became an excellent lab station, a measurement portal to fixed instruments and a great demonstration station in the classroom. In 2008, National Instruments introduced NI ELVIS II. It had all the features of the earlier version but with better software NI ELVISmx. The test bed was lighter, had a better layout of controls, more interfacing ports and a high speed USB connection to your computer. The NI design software Multisim was integrated into the NI ELVIS software instruments. It revolutionized the way circuits, signal analysis, interfacing or biological laboratory courses could be offered. Today, in 2010, National Instruments introduces myDAQ. It is a small portable data acquisition system, which connects to your computer with a USB cable. It provides a portal into the analog or digital world of measurement and control. Build a favorite circuit on a breadboard and use the software instruments like the Digital Multimeter or oscilloscope to test and debug your circuit. myDAQ provides +15, -15 and +5 voltage sources to power your circuit. Design a LabVIEW program with LabVIEW Student Edition to help control your experiment. All you need is your interface circuit, a myDAQ, and a computer. If the computer is a laptop, then the whole test bed is portable. myDAQ brings practical teaching out of the labs and into the real world, be it on a race track, in the woods or in a dorm room.

How You Can Use These Labs These labs have been designed to tickle your imagination and encourages users to be creative. At the same time the labs cover many of the features of myDAQ, NI ELVISmx software VIs and instruments. Our motto is Go forth and measure and control and have fun! Labs 1 & 2 demonstrates myDAQ software instruments for DC and AC measurements Labs 3 & 4 introduces an IR rangefinder and a photogate sensor Labs 5 & 6 feature the digital port (input, output or a mixture of inputs and outputs) Lab 7, 8 & 9 feature signal analysis and use the iPod input and output ports Lab 10 builds a Karaoke analog circuit and its virtual LabVIEW simulation Circuits Photogate counting 8- bit data from eight switches or 8 LEDs 4 x 4 matrix switch 741 Op Amp microphone preamp LM386 audio amplifier Karaoke circuit Photometer LabVIEW Programs Resistor color codes Using myDAQ to measure capacitance Polynominal Curve Fitting Measuring distance with an IR ranger Touchless keylock Successive Approximation Technique VU meter Simon Says Game Virtual piano keyboard Spectrum analysis of audio signals Measuring Resonant frequency Software Karaok Optical Theremin