Tips: Analog
7 March 2000
HOW TO COLLECT ANALOG DATA ON A MAC
B & B Electronics has $60 data acquisition modules with eleven12-bit analog-to-digital converters that connect to the serial port of any computer. (Source: MacInTouch.)
Beehive <http://www.bzzzzzz.com/BeeHive/> is out of business. (3/01)
Wally Beagley (Professor and Chair of Psychology, Alma College; Eye Lines Software; President, Society for Computers in Psychology) has "had good experiences using Biopac Systems for the Mac with undergraduates for EEG [and galvanic skin response]. They have modules for all types of physiological recording (EKG, EMG, GSR, etc.)." (Source: MacPsych 11/23/98, 4/18/00)
Beagley, G. H. & Beagley, W. K. (1998) Using micro-computer based EEG to enable and encourage student designed projects. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 30 (2), 223-226
MacBrick's MacIO is a new (6/99) product from the Netherlands for interfacing Macs (via the serial port) with analog devices, such as sensors and switches. (Source: MacInTouch.)
Lance Hahn , looking for A/D and D/A cards for PCI Macs, says "Michael Freed, a retinal physiologist here at Penn, uses a Mac-based lab and has suggested some companies for top-of-the line converters (ie Axon Instruments). Here's what I've found so far:"
- National Instruments makes several Macintosh Data Acquisition Boards
PCI-MIO-16XE-50 16-bit A/D, two 12-bit D/As $1,295
PCI-1200 12-bit A/D, two 12-bit D/As $795
- Instrutech
16-bit a/d, 4 16-bit d/a, requires additional pci host interface card
ITC-16 Data Acquisition Interface with 4 D/A & 8 A/D plus 32 digital I/O channels $2000
PCI Bus card for interfacing the ITC-16 to PCI bus computers $895
Michael Bach says (7/96), "We use 3 setups to get data into our Macs:
- National Instruments has several analog i/o boards that can be programmed directly or with their high-level language LabView. LabView is expensive and slow, but reasonably good. We used it for instance in Snowden, Ullrich, and Bach (1995, Vision Res 35:1365-1373).
- MacLab: Only 8 channels (but now extendable), but the box connects to SCSI so any mac can be used, very nice strip chart and scope applications. Much cheaper than LabView, works right away, very user friendly. Good for EEG, ENG, eye movements etc. For better analysis transfer to Igor (see below) with Igor tool that reads MacLab files directly. I have heard that some people have problems with the digital trigger channel, so you might consider using an analog channel to record trigger instances and encode stimulus conditions via trigger size and/or length.
- IGOR Pro with the NIDAQ Extensions. Wavemetrics makes this wonderful analysis/graphing program and provides excellent and rapid tech support. Recently they added the NIDAQ (National Instr. Data AcQuisition) tools to allow Igor to access the National Instruments boards mentioned above. We have just started to use it, but it works wonderfully. We are massaging our EEG/VEP recordings (hundreds of megabytes) with Igor anyway, so it makes sense to record via Igor directly. Advantages: Much faster in program start up and interface response than LabView, which appears to be a dinosaur in comparison."
Norm Vinson posted the following on MacPsych (8/95), "Here's a summary of the responses I received about the post I made for a package containing a set of medical devices, software and hardware that [I can connect] to a Mac to take real-time measures of physiological parameters. I looked at biopac and that seems very good. However, a cursory examination seems to indicate that SuperScope II and LabView are comparable to biopac. Didn't look at MacLab."
- Biopac MP100 for the Mac (they have a windows version too).
Biopac Systems
- LabView
National Instruments
- Customization of LabView:
John Bouwens
Solutions And Projects
Turfschip 198
NL-1186 XS Amstelveen
The Netherlands
Phone +31-20-647 50 09
Fax +31-20-647 99 53
solutions@projects.knoware.nl
- SuperScope II
GW Instruments
35 Medford St.
Somerville, MA 02143-1237
USA
617-625-4096
617-625-1322 fax
DO268@applelink.apple.com
- MacLab