The primary purpose of all filtering is to remove as much of the obscuring components of a signal as possible, without compromising the desired signal. Once a signal has been properly conditioned, it needs to be converted to digital form for display or for storage on a computer disk. The conditioned signal is connected to the analog input of a digitizer which uses the ADC to take samples of the signal voltage at a user-determined rate. The analog samples are converted to digital values which are then transferred to the computer for display or storage. Software programs are central to modern data acquisition and control systems.
Software programs orchestrate all of the experimental control, data acquisition and analysis.
During the experiment itself, the software must issue voltage commands through the DACs, acquire and display the digitized signal, and store the data to disk. After the experiment, the software is crucial in analyzing the data and creating files and plots from the results of the analysis. Clampex 8 excels in the real-time monitoring and control of experiments. Sequencing files can automatically control an entire experiment by linking and timing protocol files, Seal or Membrane Tests, digital output patterns and holding levels, so complex experiments can be entirely automated. A variety of triggering and tagging options are available, for interaction between the researcher, Clampex 8 and various other pieces of equipment such as stimulators and perfusion systems.