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From: mcmahan@netcom.UUCP (Dave Mc Mahan)
Newsgroups: comp.dsp
Subject: Re: Wanted: Info on signal processing software (ASYST & MatLab)
Message-ID: <15809@netcom.UUCP>
Date: 30 Oct 90 03:46:26 GMT
References: <435.2729d62b@ae.chalmers.se>
Organization: Dave McMahan @ NetCom Services
Lines: 57


 In a previous article, hogstedt@ae.chalmers.se (PER HOGSTEDT) writes:
>We are currently looking for a suitable software package for signal
>acquisition and analysis on a PC platform in our biomagnetism lab.
>
>We would like to use the programs for signal acquisition, data editing,
>fairly advanced signal processing, control of analouge and digital I/O
>and would most of all like to see this as a set of callable subroutines
>to include in our own software.
>
>After scanning most of the market (I think) we seems to be left with two
>candidates: ASYST and MatLab-386.
>
>None of these packages allow us to use then as a library, rather, we will
>have to use these programs as our platform, calling special routines
>of our own from them :-(.
>
>Questions:
>If you have used one or both of these programs, what is your general
>opinion?

I have used matlab (an older version, dated 1984) for doing simulations of
digital filters.  It works quite well.  It has a built-in function that
actually implements FIR and IIR filter structures within the program, and
so is fairly quick.  I don't know how well it would work for real-time data
acquisition, filtering, and control.  I am not aware of any way to call your
own external program from within matlab, but this may have changed since my
version was released.  The version I have only works in floating point and
requires a math coprocessor to work.  If you plan to do anything quickly,
you should use a fast CPU host.  I think you may have trouble doing sustained
realtime I/O and control from within this program.


>Programming MatLab seems to be quite straight forward, but ASYST's FORTH-
>looking code makes me a bit doubtful. Do you write understandable, main-
>tainable code in ASYST?

I haven't used ASYST, but the MatLab programming language isn't bad.  It is
not as structured as I would like to see it, but it does work.  It has
trouble dealing with very large data sets (dimensions of 3000 or more) but
seems to work fine for data that is smaller.  It isn't really oriented for
making decisions and bit-control of I/O (there aren't any operators that
really allow this easily) and doesn't really understand about true integers.

>Can MatLab support mouse driven, menu/icon based user interfaces?

The version I have doesn't support this mode, but this may have changed since
1984.  If you really need speed or a menu-type of user interface, you will
probably have to create the desired functions within your own code after
verifying the simulations on matlab.


>Per Hogstedt
>Chalmers University of Technology
>Internet: hogstedt@plab.se  OR  hogstedt@ae.chalmers.se

   -dave