Channels isolate I/O from user interface

Whether you have 10 I/O points or 1000, keeping track of your data can be difficult. DAQFactory's channels take care of the hard work for you. Channels are the center point of the DAQFactory architecture. They provide the link between your I/O and all the other components in DAQFactory. Creating channels is usually as simple as filling out a table. Each channel contains the details to identify your I/O and a name. The channel name is then used throughout the rest of DAQFactory to identify the I/O point. The details of the hardware does not need to be remembered. This also allows you to change the hardware without having to recreate all your screens and control loops.

Easy setup and complete control over your I/O

Simply creating the channel will start DAQFactory acquiring your data. No scripting required. The timing parameter allows you to specify how often you want DAQFactory to request data from your device. Each channel can have a different polling interval allowing you to acquire data at different rates from different I/O points. Other tweaks are also available at the channel level to allow you to average your data on the fly, control memory usage and networking. For total flexibility, combine channels with some basic scripting.

Conversions to convert data into desired units

Using conversions you can take DAQ values such as volts, bytes, words, milliamps, or any other value that might come from your device and convert them into proper engineering units. Conversions are not limited to just slope and line. Conversions are expressions and so you can use the full power of DAQFactory Expressions and its wide function support. To save time you can apply a single conversion to multiple inputs, so no retyping the same formula over and over again for each input or output.

Device Configurator

Some devices require some extra configuration. This is made easy by using the device configurator for the device. The device configurator provides a configuration window for setting the properties of your special devices. This can be as simple as selecting the communication port parameters for a Modbus device, or identifying the I/O port of a PC104 card. More advanced configurators are available for other devices. For example, DAQFactory is an OPC client and the OPC configurator allows you to quickly browse and select your tags. This configurator even allow you to create your channels from within the configuration window simply by double clicking on the OPC tags.