will the NI USB-6008 suit my needs

[Foz1284]

Hi,

I am looking at using the NI USB-6008 to collect data from four load cells with a speed of 1kS/s(250S/s per cell) over a time frame of 2.5 seconds

my main concern is the buffer size of this unit being 512 bytes, how does the unit communicate over USB, Will it be able to keep up this sample rate for the desired length of time?

Many thanks,

Mark

[TheWay]

Hi Mark,

Yes, you should easily be able to keep up that sample rate.  In theory, you should be able to stream the full sample rate continuously to PC memory for an indefinite amount of time.  The problem with USB is that the connection is only as stable as your PC, so if your computer crashes or USB connection drops, your connection to the 6008 will be lost.  That should only be a problem if you're continuously acquiring for over a day or longer. 

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Way S.

NI UK Applications Engineer

[Chris_Rake]

To add, this is no different than PCI or other plug-in devices.  We've had USB devices running continuously for extended periods of time.  Also the DAQmx driver has been designed to maintain a solid connection with the USB-6008.  One thing to note is that the application should be written to write data to disk so that data isn't stored as a giant buffer in memory, else you will eventually run out of system resources.