Hardware and software designing of USB based plug n play data acquisition device with C# and LabView compatibility

As interdisciplinary sciences getting popular with every passing day, the need of electronic devices interfacing with a PC is also increasing. Very useful products (Arduino, RasberryPi, etc) made their way in commercial market to cater such needs however they require programming skills, specific IDE's (integrated development environments) and lack compatibility with useful tools such as NI (National Instrument) LabView[1] and C#. Since these two (C# and LabView) are supposed to be widely used for their user friendliness, but unfortunately are not prioritised as a development option due to lack of supporting hardware which is either too expensive, rare or too complex. Hence in this research the data acquisition device (DAQ) has been designed and developed to provide a hassle free solution for those who choose LabView to avoid programming or programmers who want to control and observe electronic devices such as sensors/actuators as a part of their research projects. This device is connected to PC over USB and interfaces with C# and LabView using a Direct Link Library (.dll file). It can control up to 8 Digital Inputs, 8 Digital outputs, 8 Analog Inputs and 2 Analog (PWM) outputs. Moreover some Virtual Instruments such as 4 Channel Oscilloscope, Function Generator, Logic Analyzer and PID controller has also been developed in C# to cater the needs of students and researchers.