Firmware/software platform for rapid development of PC-based data acquisition systems

In this paper, we present a flexible and easy to customize firmware/software platform which can be used to develop the control part of a PC-based data acquisition system in a very fast and efficient way. The platform relies on a simple network of microcontrollers, which act as bridges between the different devices of the system and the PC. By means of a dedicated serial link, the software application, which has been implemented with LabVIEW, directly controls each microcontroller communication interface (such as SPI, I2C or UART), and sends low-level commands to the system devices. With this approach, the firmware is the same for all the microcontrollers, it is independent of the final application, and it can be adapted to the hardware architecture of the system with a slight customization of a C header file. Devices protocols and control algorithms are instead implemented in software, and need to be specifically developed for the targeted system. To speed this task, a LabVIEW framework is provided, which allows the user to build its own application on top of a ready-to-use layer implementing the communication functions between the PC and the network. Finally, a detailed example of the platform application to a real multi-channel thermocouple data logger is reported.