A multi-platform Data Acquisition Device for Power Quality metrological certification

A Data Acquisition USB Device has been realized to be used in Power Quality monitoring activities. The adopted solution allows to perform 8 channel simultaneous data acquisition with external certified time and voltage references, working at 499 samples per 50 Hz period. The self-powered USB interface combined to multiplatform FTDI Virtual ComPort drivers yields a simple-to-use and scalable device; it can be driven simply sending and receiving data over High Speed RS232 virtual interfaces, without requiring any advanced programming skill. The virtual serial communication makes data acquisition software portable over many platforms, regardless development environment and programming language. The proposed device has been tested with custom software written in C# and VB6, than in LabView and MatLab environment.