I have wondered the same thing. I guess the Phidgets folks are somewhat in this space - if you look at the prices of the modules here, for example: http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=8 and scroll down to the "green blocks", that's going to add up if you try to configure a system with a bunch of channels. Especially considering $100 will buy three inexpensive DMMs that can each be used for voltage or current and each provide a single RS-232 data channel with updates at maybe 1Hz.
Possibly the software problem is more interesting - I'm surprised there isn't an open source LabView clone effort given all the universities that could benefit. Something that includes a sort of software module "buss" with well defined interfaces for modules of all types. Or maybe there is something like this and I just missed it. Jeff On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > It sounds like at the present time getting set up with research-quality > measurement data acquisition is either a do-it-yourself affair or something > that requires a large capital expenditure on high-end instrumentation and > LabView, and there's not much of a middle tier of solid but affordable > components and software. I wonder where the > hobbyist/inventor/small-business market is going in this regard -- whether > there will be an increased demand for these things. You may have happened > upon an interesting business opportunity. > > Eric > >
