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From: lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Strip chart recorders ???
Message-ID: <153724@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 29 Apr 91 22:06:56 GMT
Sender: daemon@pyramid.pyramid.com
Reply-To: lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
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In article <1991Apr29.125725.14314@athena.cs.uga.edu> boone@athena.cs.uga.edu (Roggie Boone) writes:
>
>Hi!  Can anyone supply me with a name and address of a company that
>has strip-chart recorders (ie. a device that rolls a paper strip underneath
>a pen that moves back and forth depending on the strength of the input
>signal to the instrument, thereby yielding a nice "picture" of signal
>strength over time).  (Forgive my non-technical description there).
>
>I do not need anything fancy -- this is just for a home project, so the
>cheaper the better.  I am thinking about building a simplified radio 
>telescope to "listen" to activity on the Sun and would like to hook the
>strip chart recorder up to the radio telescope so that I can have a
>visual record of the solar activity.
>
>As an alternative, if anyone knows of articles, books, and or schematics 
>that show how to hook the output of a device such as the radio telescope
>to a computer (old IBM PC) so that the info could be recorded directly
>to disk and then graphed later, please send such info also.
>
   How's your budget?   The A/D, D/A boards from Keithley can
   provide digital sampling of an analog wave.  You could even
   program the interface to increase/decrease resolution
   (samples/time period) when "interesting" events or "boring"
   routine signals occur.  

   What you do with the data will depend on programming, you can
   create screen displays and save to disk....then use a printer
   to print samples for exchange...or just mail the .gif
   formats.   

   Keithley is at 508-880-3000.  If you already have a Clone, an
   acquisition board would be cheaper than a strip chart
   recorder...

   Have fun.