DCM: Data collection middleware based on instruments

Intelligent instruments have become a common practice in many industrial applications. Unfortunately, these devices vary in their communication interfaces, commands and types of data they capture, making upper development complex and difficult. To address this issue, we design a scalable data collection middleware (DCM). The middleware acts as a bridge between instruments access and high application, which makes instruments accessible in a uniform way. It can support most of the common instruments by providing a set of data acquisition primitives. Besides, it offers the sampled data in a standard XML format. The proposed middleware is verified through multiple cases of developing data acquisition systems for household appliances. The results show that it is efficient and simplifies the system development remarkably.