Hardware and software of DIY analog frontends for PCI-7200 DAQ card, meant to be useful with long-term distros on any PC with available 32-bit PCI slot(s)
First, I'll need to complete the whole unit (my own will be based on Dell Optiplex 7050 motherboard with few spare parts), then test it with PCI-7200 DAQ cards and long-term distro (likely Debian stable) with Comedilib and GTKview. Then, I'll try designing simple digital, multipurpose backend PCBs, first binary, then balanced ternary – the latter is rare among DAQs but quite achievable, which seems to have potential; don't treat it as anything more than signal and encoding experiment though, it's not true substitute for modern binary logic. If both work, I'm finally gonna start designing analog frontends hardware and software (host + firmaware), with each of frontend classes named after favorite fictional girls:
- Ϫⲉⲓⲇ (Jade): various ADC frontends, with one semi-universal frontend subclass + three main subclasses oriented towards different goals (highest achieveable frequency range vs highest possible bit resolution vs highest number of analog input channels);
- Ⲙⲁϧⲉⲗⲓⲁⲛ (Machlian): various DAC frontends – subclasses analogous to previous, one semi-universal and three speciallized (probably some of them may be based on Direct Digital Synthesis, rather than actual DAC);
- Ⲗⲓⲥⲁ (Lisa): power-electronics and electrotechnics measurement-only oriented frontend – potentially most dangerous, with a lot of precautions applied on it, and even more necessary from potential users;
- Ⲣⲓⲁⲥ (Rias): chirp-based spectrum analyzer frontend – likely will be derived from
tinySAsimilar projects due to IP laws protecting tinySA – most likely RTL-SDR (assuming I will be able to adopt it to randomly found, ancient DAQ card);
Don't be surprised with „waifu” naming scheme, if I'm eccentric enough to try adotping old DAQ cards to DIY-ish DAQ system with vast analog capabilites (the last part being TRULY hard).
OH, IF IT'S NOT ALREADY CLEAR: this is modular setup, requiring awareness from any potential user in order to not harm themselves. I assume you already are one, and MIT license doesn't protect you from any property/owner/user damage. Also, I hope documentation of everything here will be clear enough. It's not plug-and-play anyway, too.