Thermocouple data acquisition with PCI-6031E

[shantaram]

I am building air temperature sensors for calculating adiabatic lapse rate at our MET tower. I am using MAX on PCI-6031E to acquire the thermocouple data. Junction compensation temperature is preset to 25 deg Celsius, which is good in a laboratory environment. But the same compensation cannot be used in field as the terminals are not any more at 25 deg celsius. Please correct me if I am wrong. My question is: How do I set the compensation temperature in the field?

[AVR]

Either purchase a connector block that has a built-in reference junction (one of the data channels will need to be assigned to read the cold junction temperature and use it as a reference) - or - purchase a battery powered electronic ice point reference that will always reference the cold junction to 32 deg F. For a typical ice point reference, take a look at Model MCJ-(TC Type), MCJ-E for E-type, from Omega.com ($99.00). We use 128 of these devices and achieve at least 10kHz response in unsteady flows.

[Filipe A.]

Hello;

The best way to go about that is to use a terminal block that has CJC built in, such as the SCB-68.
Regards
Filipe A.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments