5. Overview
You have just received a big box (or several big boxes) from Campbell Scientific,
opened it, spread its contents across the floor, and now you sit wondering what to
do.
Well, that depends.
Probably, the first thing you should understand is the basic architecture of a data
acquisition system. Once that framework is in mind, you can begin to
conceptualize what to do next. So, job one, is to go back to the Quickstart
(p. 35)
section of this manual and work through the tutorial. When you have done that,
and then read the following, you should have the needed framework.
A Campbell Scientific data acquisition system is made up of the following five
basic components:
• Sensors
• Datalogger, which includes:
o Clock
o Measurement and control circuitry
o Memory
o Hardware and firmware to communicate with comms devices
o User-entered CRBasic program
• Power supply
• Comms link or external storage device
• Datalogger support software
(p. 494)
The figure Data Acquisition Systems — Overview (p. 56) illustrates a common
CR800-based data acquisition system.
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