Remote data acquisition using labVIEW

In this paper, a remote data acquisition laboratory project is presented for a senior technical elective telecommunications course in the Electrical Engineering Technology Baccalaureate Program at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. There are several unique characteristics of this project. First, the project is multidisciplinary in nature since it combines material from the telecommunications course with material from a junior level instrumentation and measurements course, where students learn how to use LabVIEW as a programming language and how to program a data acquisition (DAQ) card for analog input and output operations. Second, the project encompasses several laboratory experiments which are integrated together to form the complete project. The remote data acquisition project consists of a hardware setup phase and a software development phase. The hardware setup phase consists of a dedicated remote PC with a DAQ card for monitoring analog input signals and a local PC to allow the user to define the control parameters for the remote DAQ card and to initiate the data acquisition process. Each PC will be connected to a phone jack through an internal modem. The software development phase consists of two separate programs written for two PCs. The first program is the remote PC program. The objective of the remote PC program is to automatically acquire analog input data, which is initiated from a user at the local PC, and to upload the complete file. The second program is the local PC program. The objective of the local PC program is to automatically send the parameter information needed by the remote PC program to control the DAQ card and to download the file.