Development of an Electronic Nose-Tongue Data Acquisition System using a Microcontroller

Abstract: An ad-hoc data acquisition system was constructed in order to control an array of different types of sensors and to collect their data. The system will be used as the core for electronic nose and tongue systems used for classifying and distinguishing different levels of contamination in water and other types of liquid. The system consists of analog and digital electronics as well as software for a microcontroller and a PC. The heart of the system is a PIC microcontroller that can communicate with the real world and with a PC. With the real world it is referred to analogue devices that measure things that are infinitely variable, they are not quantized like in the digital world which is an approximation of the real world. A microcontroller is a small computer fit into a single chip. This computer is a microprocessor together with memory and I/O ports. Microchip is a company that has produced popular microcontrollers called PIC’s. The microprocessor was programmed in the language C. The system can take samples at accurate time intervals. A LabVIEW program was developed so that the system can be controlled with a user friendly interface. The sensors can be monitored in the LabVIEW program and the data can be exported to a spread sheet text document, ready to be opened in another program for analysis. With serial transmission the designed data acquisition board cannot only be interfaced with LabVIEW on a PC running Windows, but also with Linux or Windows Mobile. The system is robust, economic and portable. The report tries to describe how the development was done.