The Acquire program from Bruxton Corporation performs high-speed multi-channel data recording. can read Acquire files, regardless of whether the files were written under Microsoft Windows or on the Apple Macintosh.
If the filter cannot read your Acquire files, they may have been written by a newer version of Acquire. Check the Bruxton Web site to determine if an update is required.
An Acquire file consists of file parameters, and a sequence of data series. Each series is composed of a sequence of sweeps. For example, a file might have the structure:
A segment is a continuous sequence of acquired data. If event screening is disabled, each sweep consists of a single segment. If event screening is enabled, a sweep may consist of an arbitrary number of segments. Gaps between the segments represent time during which data was discarded.
For example, a sequence of segments might be:
In the above example, there is an implied gap of 1000 frames between the first and second frames, and an implied gap of 800 frames between the second and third frames.
Acquire measures time within a sweep in units of frames. A frame is one acquired sample from each input channel. For example, if Acquire is recording from four input channels using a National Instruments PCI-1200 at 50 microseconds/sample, each channel is sampled once every 200 microseconds. Therefore a frame interval is 200 microseconds. If an event occurs at 1200 milliseconds following the beginning of a sweep, the time is recorded as 6000 frame intervals.
Within an Acquire file, all recording uses the same frame rate.
For consistency, Acquire always operates in SI units, for example, A (not pA), V (not mV), and s (not ms). For example, a recorded single-channel current of 5pA would be represented as 5·10-12A.
For presentation, Acquire has a concept of natural units for a channel, which indicates the scaling to be used for values presented for display. For example, if the natural units for a channel are 10-3, a value of -80·10-3V would be displayed as -80mV.
For each digitizer channel, Acquire records data as provided by the digitizer, along with scaling and units information. For example, suppose that a given channel records data in the range ±10V. If the input gain is marked as 1000, and the input units as A (amperes), the input actually measures the range ±10mA.
Within an Acquire file, all recording uses the same channel configuration. The gain associated with a channel can change with the sweep, so the signal range on a given channel may vary from sweep to sweep.
Each sweep can contain event markers. These markers are associated with control channels. For example, one control channel might be Solution while another might be Wavelength. Within an Acquire file, all recording uses the same control channel configuration.
Each event marker has an associated numeric value, text, and optional data. The numeric value is associated with a label and units provided by the control channel. For example, the Solution channel might specify a label of EGTA and units of M. An event marker for the Solution control channel might contain the numeric value 0.025 (representing 25mM) and the text CFS.
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