The star-hub module gives the possibility to build up systems with as many as 128 synchronous channels ABA mode. Before and after trigger events the analog channels are sampled continuously with slow speed. But on a trigger event a very fast acquisition is performed with maximum sampling speed.

The M2i series, introduced by Spectrum GmbH the specialist for fast PC data acquisition, is a new generation of A/D cards based on the MI series. In the design of the new card series, an abundance of customer preferences, new ideas and enhanced concepts have been incorporated. The card base has been totally renewed and offers a wide variety of new functions and features. The approved module structure was retained to grant the new functionality to a wide range of data acquisition cards. Together with the proven and perfected analog modules there are in total nearly 50 different card versions that differ in A/D resolution, sampling rates and channel count. This versatile version range allows an optimal adaptation to the application needs. As an example the M2i cards can be used in the area of radar, sonar, laser, ultrasound of spectroscopy. Besides this there are several application areas in the production test, automotive, medical equipment, laboratory or research and development.

The offered cards cover the speed range from 200 kS/s up to 200 MS/s with A/D resolutions of 8, 12, 14 or 16-bit. Depending on the card family and version, there are between 1 and 8 synchronous channels on each card. Each channel has it’s own A/D converter and it’s own amplifier with up to 8 input ranges. This structure is contrary to the frequently offered multiplexing card, allowing 100% synchronous sampling without any phase delay between the channels.

The on-board memory has been improved to a maximum of 4 GBytes. This size allows the acquisition of a 12-bit analog channel for over 10 seconds using a sampling rate of 200 MS/s. Even this large 4 GBytes memory is completely integrated on-board, with no need for additional slot space. When doing slower acquisitions the complete memory can be used as a FIFO buffer allowing sustained data transfers of more than 200 MB/s over the PCI-X interface. The new interface is still 100% compatible to standard 32 bit PCI systems.

Due to the completely new designed card control hardware the M2i cards offer an extensive range of application proven features. An example of this is the enhanced Multiple Recording mode that allows the acquisition of events with a very fast repetition rate without restarting the hardware. The programmable pre-trigger, post-trigger, delay-trigger, the extra timestamp memory and the extremely short rearming times satisfy all needs of this mode. Spectrum has resurrected a long missed feature that old stand-alone transient recorders have been famous for – the ABA mode. Before and after trigger events the analog channels are sampled continuously with slow speed. But on a trigger event a very fast acquisition is performed with maximum sampling speed. This mode allows voltage logging over long periods combined with fast acquisitions of the events with up to 200 MS/s.

All cards offer a wide variety of trigger possibilities. Besides the classical channel trigger with edge and level detection all M2i A/D cards also include windows trigger, external TTL trigger, pulsewidth trigger, Gated Sampling as well as OR/AND in conjunction of the diverse trigger sources. Special attention has been made by Spectrum on the versatile programmable clock section. Besides a universal PLL offering fine clock granularity there’s also the possibility to select the on-board quartz. This mode is especially good, well suited for accurate acquisitions in the frequency range. Certainly the cards can also be used with external clock sources. It’s then possible to use the external clock as direct sampling clock (including a programmable clock edge) or as a reference clock for the PLL as well as in combination with a programmable clock divider.

The synchronization of multiple cards can be done with the star-hub module. It’s possible to synchronize up to 16 cards in one system with this option. As all cards can use an individual clock divider it’s no problem to synchronize cards, even those with different sampling speeds. It is for example, possible to make an acquisition of 2 channels with 8-bit resolution and 100 MS/s synchronously with an acquisition of 8 channels with 12 -bit resolution and 1 MS/s. With the help of the star-hub module one is able to build up systems with as many as 128 synchronous channels. Due to the enhanced triggering capabilities of the M2i series it’s also possible to use all 128 channels as trigger sources wired by an OR function. The acquisition on all 128 channels is then started if any of these channels detects a trigger event.

Besides these hardware features, the extremely simple-to-program software interface is a unique feature. Due to the register-based interface with 6 basic functions, user programs can be written in a very short programming time. The cards of the M2i series are delivered together with drivers for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP64 and Linux as well as a lot of programming examples. Several different third-party products are supported as an option like LabVIEW, LabWindows, MATLAB, VEE, DASYLab and MS Excel.