Our Human Interface Data Acquisition System (HIDAS™) is a low-cost, flexible, data acquisition system for connecting physical switches, dials, potentiometers, encoders, lamps, displays, gauges, and other custom devices to a PC or workstation via a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus interface controller.

HIDAS™ was developed for applications like flight simulators where a human is in the loop controlling or viewing the connected devices. HIDAS™ takes advantage of the relatively slow speed of human interaction in its design and component selection to keep costs down and flexibility high. HIDAS™ uses Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology, making it quickly adaptable for custom interfaces.

HIDAS™ creates a network of PCI bus Host Interface Controller(s), each wired to one or more Node board via unshielded, twisted-pair cabling.  Node boards are, in turn, wired to physical components.

Node boards can be hundreds of feed apart from each other and from the controller.  A HIDAS™ system is cost-effective for environments with as few as 10 devices up to thousands or more.

The associated Linux® HIDAS™ interface software provides calibration, diagnostics, engineering unit conversion, and easy-to-use test and checkout of complex I/O.  This separates the concerns of the physical hardware from the control and algorithms o the application code.

The HIDAS™ consists of 1 to 4 PCI Host Interface Controller (HIC) boards that are mounted in a Linux®-based PC. A HIC connects to up to 128 Node boards via a 2 MBit/sec serial bus using CAT5 UTP cabling.

There are five types of HIDAS™ Node boards:

• Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL) board
• Display Driver board
• Analog Input board
• Analog Output board
• Custom serial board used for LCD/LED displays and specialty aircraft serial interfaces

Node boards have a Euroboard 3U form factor (100 cm x 160 cm) and are typically mounted in 9-slot HIDAS™ Backplanes installed in 3U VME/Euroboard racks. Backplanes are passive boards that simplify mounting, data link connections, and power distribution.  Backplane and rack configuration can be custom or can be configured 3 Backplanes across (27 Node boards) to mount in standard 19-inch (48.26 cm) racks.

The HIDAS™ modular architecture simplifies and standardizes the software interface and the device wiring, thus reducing the time and risk of hardware-software integration.

Note: To download the HIDAS product brochure, click here.