NI-DAQ Technologies

Productivity with the DAQ Assistant
The DAQ Assistant, bundled with NI-DAQ, provides a step-by-step dialog guide for configuring, testing, and programming measurement tasks. Plus, you can automatically generate code for low-level customization. Along with other configuration based VIs in LabVIEW, the DAQ Assistant makes it easier and faster to develop data acquisition applications.  More information

Configuration Services
Measurement & Automation Explorer, bundled with NI-DAQ simplifies the configuration of your measurement hardware. You can quickly detect and configure all hardware and verify its operations with interactive test panels. You can also view the date of the last external device calibration and perform an internal self-calibration.  More information

Measurement Ready Virtual Channels
With NI-DAQ, you can choose from 22 preconfigured measurement ready virtual channels including voltage, strain, current output, pulse width, and digital port output. You can configure these virtual channels in the units you actually want to measure and let NI-DAQ figure out how to configure your DAQ and signal conditioning devices to take the measurement. The DAQ Assistant, bundled with NI-DAQ, provides a step-by-step dialog guide for configuring, testing, and programming measurement tasks and channels. More Information

Waveform and single-point I/O
NI-DAQ driver software applies the latest hardware and software technologies to deliver high-performance for single-point and waveform I/O while providing superior ease-of-use. You can acquire single-point data at rates over 50kHz, twenty times faster than previous versions. NI-DAQ has optimized DMA routines to transfer waveform data as fast as possible across the PC bus. More Information and LabVIEW 7 example code

Multi-Threaded Hardware Services
NI-DAQ driver software is fully multi-threaded, allowing you to perform simultaneous operations without blocking. For example, you can simultaneously perform analog input, digital output, and counter operations. Without multithreading, you have to poll and set occurrences on the analog read to avoid blocking other operations. Multithreading makes it easy for you to build DAQ applications which access multiple functions and devise concurrently.  More Information and LabVIEW 7 example code

Timing & Synchronization Services
When performing multiple measurement operations it is important to know the time and phase relationship. NI-DAQ helps you quickly and easily share board clocks and triggers between measurement devices. NI-DAQ includes a routing and synchronization engine which automatically completes routes within your device and across the RTSI or PXI trigger bus. 

Pinpoint error diagnostics
When building a DAQ application, determining the exact location cause of an error can save hours of programming. NI-DAQ has a complete error reporting architecture which reports errors and warnings in your DAQ application. Each error message tells you exactly which function or VI returned the error, the specific reason for the error, and potential solutions. 

Seamless measurement analysis
NI-DAQ works seamlessly with the powerful analysis built into LabVIEW. Data acquired with NI-DAQ can be passed directly into one of more than four hundred pre-built analysis routines in LabVIEW. Many of these analyses in LabVIEW, such as spectral analysis, shown below, can be configured in simple menu-based windows.  More Information and LabVIEW 7 example code

Long Term Interoperability
National Instruments has a long history of delivery high-quality, easy-to-use driver software for our measurement devices. Since its introduction in 1993 NI-DAQ has undergone many improvements and revisions. Throughout these changes, National Instruments has delivered continuing interoperability between new and old drivers. You can modify existing applications to use new features or you can leave those applications intact and unchanged. 

DAQ for non-Windows Operating Systems
The Measurement Hardware Driver Development Kit (DDK) is a set of tools for building small, application specific data acquisition applications on virtually any operating system. The Measurement Hardware DDK gives you the lowest, register-level interface of NI-DAQ. This interface is the same one used by NI Software Engineers as the base for NI-DAQ. Because it is at such a low level, it is much easier to port to any operating system, but lacks nearly all of the ease-of-use the full NI-DAQ driver. NI provides OS components for Linux, Mac OS X, Pocket PC, LabVIEW RT, and Windows. There is a shell OS component so you can port to additional operating systems.  More Information