Data acquisition and signal processing using a laptop personal computer

Abstract

This article describes a battery-operated system, consisting of a laptop personal computer, peripheral electronics, and associated software programs, that allows for flexible data acquisition and conditional signal processing. The design of a data acquisition system around a laptop computer contains many challenges not encountered in conventional PC-based systems. The focus of this article is on those aspects of the peripheral electronics that are implemented specifically to minimize power consumption in a battery-operated environment, take advantage of the particular features of our laptop, and provide the greatest possible signal processing flexibility and capability. The use of this system in an experiment to detect bearing defects by acquiring and processing the signal from an accelerometer is described. The application employs a vibration envelope detection scheme along with the full flexibility designed into the peripheral electronics to provide a quite sophisticated tool for monitoring the health of a bearing. © 1991, American Institute of Physics. All rights reserved.