Cheap technicians' test bench for 24V component validation - what's the answer?

[dest2ko]

What's the most practical solution to getting 24V data acquisition, for the purpose of validating analog scaled data from sensors and sinking discrete inputs, without deploying an expensive controller? The sbRIO form factor, which is what I originally sought to look at, but still expensive, is a 3.3V nominal DIO bank. The more I look, the more I am thinking it is pretty uncommon to try and get 24V DI and 4-20mA (28VDC max) from some kind of breakout DAQ-to-USB dongle solution. Am I stuck with finding the cheapest cRIO and pairing the 9208/9425? 

Thank you,

[crossrulz]

How much real-time control do you need?  If you are just wanting to turn on a bit and see the reaction, I would go with a USB cDAQ chassis and the modules you already mentioned for the cRIO.  Then you just make the Windows application to do your test.

But if you need the realtime, cRIO is the way to go.

[dest2ko]

Sampling rate would be negligible in this application -- merely enough to where it's responsive enough to keep the user engaged. 

So with a 4 slot cdaq (would like to not require them to swap modules out) we're still at about $1800, then.