A/D and open source software

[theDtrain]

Greetings!

I've recently acquired a Waters 600e systems with a 484 UV/Vis detector. I'm trying to hook the detector up to a A/D converter and import the data into some open source software. I was planning on using peak simple but I'm afraid that I would need to purchase a $1600 A/D converter and the a/d converter I have will not work. I currenly have a Nelson Analytical 840 a/d converter. I haven't yet installed peak simple to see if I can get them to pair.

Has anyone had any experience using open source software and a/d converters with equipment like this? What have you found that works? Is there some older software out there that might help solve my problem?

Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
DM

[entropiclabs]

Hi. I would not recommend PeakSimple.

There is a super cheap A/D converter available on eBay for $250. It comes with a 2 channel A/D converter and software. It's from China, and not the best software but it works for LC/GC analog signals just fine. The CDS is almost identical to PeakSimple, both are quite poor. You can use a USB to serial converter to connect it to any standard USB port on your PC.

In the eBay search engine type, "Dual Channel Chromatography Data System for GC and HPLC", and you'll find it.

A better option is to buy an old Varian Star 800 MIB box and use Varian Star WS. You can get up to 4 channels of A/D conversion via ethernet, plus Star is an excellent CDS.

Another option would be Clarity CDS with their NCOM box. That is expensive though.

[theDtrain]

Thanks for the info. I see a Varian 800 MIB on ebay but I'm having trouble finding the Varian Star MS software. In fact I'm trying to also find software for our Star 3600 GC and Saturn 2000 MS we recently received via donation. Any ideas where to find the Star workstation software? Or MS Workstation?

Darren

[lespaul]

Hi theDtrain,

We're you able to solve your ADC issue or find the software? Im running into the same wall with PeakSimple as it requires their own ADC ($1,700)

[antonk]

UniChrom (not OSS)
http://www.unichrom.com/dle.php

among set of supported ADC
http://www.unichrom.com/matrix-adce.shtml

provides driver called SIMPLE
http://www.unichrom.com/simple/simplee.shtml

which accepts ASCII data samples stream either from serial port or from socket.
So you can design your own ADC or use Arduino.

[lespaul]

Thanks antonk.

I just found a ss420 ISA card. Does anyone know if the SRI GC 8610 can be used with this?