Sunday, March 19, 2017

Alternatives to Contec PCIe Analog input/output cards

Looking for multichannel DAC and ADC cards for our PCIexpress bus CPU, a company called Contec has a wide assortment of options. Unfortunately, the technical support for the company is so poor that just getting the two boards we've bought , the AI-1616L-LPE and AO-1616L-LPE, installed and evaluating has been an unexpected struggle. Sadly, this has turned out to be yet another product niche that there aren't a lot of suppliers for. Contec is really the only one producing scientific interface boards with the type of options and variation similar to National Instruments which does this type of thing great but just for older PC buses or for their PXI systems.

Info about Contec:
Contec's nicely self-sorting product page: http://www.contec.com/products/daq/analog/product-list.php">http://www.contec.com/products/daq/analog/product-list.php">http://www.contec.com/products/daq/analog/product-list.php
The support page for the AI-1616L: http://www.contec.com/product.php?id=1694
The support page for the AO-1616L: http://www.contec.com/product.php?id=1923
This reseller's page nicely displays just how many options Contec produces: http://www.dpie.com/daq/pcie-low-profile-analog-io/

Alternative PCIe Analog I/O boards found:
National Insturments sells basically one board which is a giant mix of analog I/O and digital I/O options: http://www.directindustry.com/prod/national-instruments/product-5074-981755.html
It turns out that this board is iterated through several options which just seem to be the same board with more and more features populated to a maximum of 32 analog inputs, 4 analog outputs, and many different digital options that I don't care about: http://www.ni.com/datasheet/pdf/en/ds-152
This french company makes this one board which has a giant mix of analog and digital IO: https://www.acquisys.fr/en/product/pcie-6208v-gl/
These guys seem to be reselling the french company's card. It is curious why there is no attribution to the original company: https://www.circuitspecialists.com/pcie-6208v-glg.html
The previously unheard-of Measurement Computing has a few options, although mostly for PCI and for PCIe mostly digital I/O. Like for all other finds so far, this company's options basically boil down to one board with mixed analog output and input: http://www.mccdaq.com/data-acquisition/PCI
Advantec is a recognizable name and they have a few PCIe cards. As usual they have a lot of PCI card and the PCIe cards are mostly digital I/O. http://www.advantech.com/products/daq-cards/sub_gf-50hh