This a comprehensive handbook for Interfacing Instrumentation With Computers and Programming of Data Acquisition, Analysis and Display. This extensive introduction and cookbook approach will be invaluable to a number of audiences, including: 1. Laboratory Scientists for whom the computer is a tool to perform their research in domains ranging from psychophysiology to high-energy physics, 2. Control System and Process Plant Engineers who need to interface, control and data log from a variety of equipment in a reliable manner, 3. Embedded System Engineers and Designers who need an understanding of interfacing to a variety of equipment and developing application programs for data analysis and control, and 4. Hobbyists and Makers who may have experimented with Arduino and simple Open Source hardware who now need to make computers work in a real application (or who may wish to interface a conventional PC to other hardware).
This book develops the background for Interfacing and Programming Computers in all Real-Time Applications. It does much more than it claims in being a programming manual for Python in Instrumentation Applications. The background needed to understood what Instrumentation is and how it is used in a variety of applications is provided; this handbook also goes into the essential Electronics for all sorts of computer and instrumentation interfaces; a self-sufficient Python Programming tutorial is provided, the Tools and Methods of hardware interfacing and testing is given; all of these topics are well covered in sufficient detail for the novice in addition to the extensive tutorial on Programming Data Acquisition, Analysis, Logging and Graphical Display promised in the title.
I would have welcomed a similar book on interfacing and programming minicomputers and early microprocessor systems to laboratory systems in my university days, and with the current proliferation of real-time embedded applications, hobbyists and makers and inexpensive data-acquisition hardware the value of this handbook is multiplied many-fold.
Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA
IT & HCI Consultant and Researcher
formerly on the Senior Consulting Staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corporation