MCC USB-1608G Series: High-Speed Multifunction USB DAQ Devices

We've purchased quite a number of this item, and they always operate reliably. We've used Measurement Computing products for many years, and whenever technical phone support is needed, it's always excellent.

The USB-1608HS-2AO fits the ticket for so many of the Process Control and Test Measurement systems that we develop for internal use. The MCC Universal Libraries allow for quick and easy development in the Visual Studio .NET environment and the USB-1608HS-2AO always works flawlessly.

I am completely happy with the performance of this DAQ. I purchased 2 of them, and the simultaneous channel sampling with high resolution and fast data rates is excellent. The value of this product is quite good compared with competitors; priced less but equal or better specifications. If you do not plan to use MCC software to interface with this device, then I suggest you contact your DAQ software vendor to make sure they support all functionality of the device, including the counter/timer functionality.

We've had a long-standing experience with MCC products and this item continues that tradition of excellence. It has enabled us to improve the performance of our device and help us move forward with the technology. The technical support with this company is beyond comparison, always friendly, and extremely helpful.

We've had a long-standing experience with MCC products and this item continues that tradition of excellence. It has enabled us to improve the performance of our device and help us move forward with the technology. The technical support with this company is beyond comparison, always friendly, and extremely helpful.

Caveats: I have experience with only a handful of daq devices, and this is the first USB one I have used. Don't give any respect at all to those bar graphs under "product rating" in this review. Physical: convenient, well designed, screw terminals easy to use Hardware: I'm not equipped to verify all the specs, and have not tried all features, but it works as expected. With 16 bits in ADC and DAC rather than 12, it much easier to do some things with this, compared to my old equipment. The USB interface is much easier to use than a PC card interface for which one has to write and maintain a kernel driver., and deal with interrupts. Firmware: It would be very helpful if mccdaq would publish the code and FPGA config, so users could try modifying it. Larger FIFO buffers would be desirable for some uses. There is an issue with control transfers being ignored after a scan has completed but before data has been read out. Continuous scanning is of limited utility because the sample rate cannot be changed (at least I could not do it) without stopping, reading ADC FIFO, reloading DAC FIFO, and restarting, which all takes tens of milliseconds-- enough to make a highly annoying transient when I am trying to evaluate a resonance. Documentation: The manual needs explanations. There are various reset actions, with no hint besides the command name to tell what they do or when to use them. One thing I wrote did not work because I had two of these in the wrong order. A state diagram would be very helpful.

Caveats: I have experience with only a handful of daq devices, and this is the first USB one I have used. Don't give any respect at all to those bar graphs under "product rating" in this review. Physical: convenient, well designed, screw terminals easy to use Hardware: I'm not equipped to verify all the specs, and have not tried all features, but it works as expected. With 16 bits in ADC and DAC rather than 12, it much easier to do some things with this, compared to my old equipment. The USB interface is much easier to use than a PC card interface for which one has to write and maintain a kernel driver., and deal with interrupts. Firmware: It would be very helpful if mccdaq would publish the code and FPGA config, so users could try modifying it. Larger FIFO buffers would be desirable for some uses. There is an issue with control transfers being ignored after a scan has completed but before data has been read out. Continuous scanning is of limited utility because the sample rate cannot be changed (at least I could not do it) without stopping, reading ADC FIFO, reloading DAC FIFO, and restarting, which all takes tens of milliseconds-- enough to make a highly annoying transient when I am trying to evaluate a resonance. Documentation: The manual needs explanations. There are various reset actions, with no hint besides the command name to tell what they do or when to use them. One thing I wrote did not work because I had two of these in the wrong order. A state diagram would be very helpful.