Since the early days of electronics, data acquisition and signal conditioning have enabled us to measure quantities — such as temperature, light levels, voltages and currents — and represent them in a meaningful format ot required parties such as engineers, scientist or management. Moreover, we have been able to use electronic data acquisition and data logging to capture data in remote locations, either by leaving standalone equipment and collecting the data periodically, or by means of telecommunication. Current technology can even send probes deep into the earth or far away into inter-stellar space, so from technology point of view it’s almost nothing that can prevent you from getting data from anywhere and anytime.
Several years ago, data acquisition and logging, especially capturing them from remote locations can mean prohibitively expensive endeavour. However, now computer-based instrumentation and internet have changed this field forever. Data acquisition and logging even with remote capturing capability can utilize mass-products such as personal computers and worldwide network such as internet which automatically bring the price to a more acceptable level.
Now, you don’t have to break the bank just to monitor your office, factories, your home or any place you can imagine that you need to monitor from time to time. Now, it is easy to continuously monitor the humidity of server room, temperature of an engine, which valves are open or how big the are open and the time of opening, and it’s also able to record them, analyse them and produce nice reports about those activities.
