This article is the first in a three-part series exploring the advantages of cDAQ. In Part 1, I’ll focus on cost savings across the test lifecycle. In Part 2 we’ll explore how flexibility keeps cDAQ relevant across diverse projects, and in Part 3 we’ll highlight the portability that makes it practical outside the lab.
As a Test Engineer at Ball Systems, I spend much of my time thinking about efficiency—both in the test systems I design and the tools I use myself. Testing is at the core of engineering. It ensures designs work as intended, protects companies from costly failures, and accelerates time to market. The challenge is that testing itself can quickly become one of the most expensive parts of the product development process.
Over the years I’ve worked with test systems ranging from massive racks of equipment to portable, modular setups. One tool has consistently proven its value for both our customers and for my own projects: the NI CompactDAQ (cDAQ) platform.
One of the biggest cost drivers in traditional test setups is hardware duplication. In a rack-based system, you might have an oscilloscope, a DMM, a temperature logger, and multiple DAQs all running in parallel. Each instrument must be purchased separately, calibrated, and maintained—driving up costs.
With NI’s C Series I/O modules, a single cDAQ chassis can host multiple measurement types: voltage, current, temperature, strain, vibration, and more. Instead of buying five separate instruments, you buy one chassis and swap in the right modules. This consolidation reduces upfront costs, simplifies wiring, shortens integration time, and minimizes the learning curve for engineers.
Many organizations feel pressured to overbuy channel capacity up front, because expanding traditional systems often requires a complete redesign. For example, you may need 16 channels today but 64 channels next year.
With cDAQ, you can start small—say, with a 1-slot USB chassis and a couple of modules for quick proof-of-concept tests. Later, you can expand to a 14-slot Ethernet chassis to manage higher channel counts. This pay-as-you-grow approach ensures your budget goes toward actual project needs rather than unused capacity.
At Ball Systems, we often take this route—starting with compact R&D systems and then scaling into full production testers. You can see examples of this approach in our Project Gallery.
Maintenance is another hidden expense. Rack instruments require regular calibration, firmware updates, and vendor servicing. Multiply that across dozens of instruments and costs add up quickly.
With cDAQ, calibration is isolated to individual modules. If a thermocouple module drifts out of spec, it can be swapped or calibrated without taking the entire system offline. This modularity reduces downtime and lowers the total cost of ownership.
In one customer project, a module failed mid-test. Instead of losing weeks of data, the team paused briefly, swapped in a replacement Analog Input module, and restarted testing in minutes. That type of resilience is invaluable.
Every hour spent configuring hardware is an hour not spent advancing your product to market. I’ve used rack-based systems that take days to configure, requiring multiple engineers just to get instruments communicating.
By contrast, with cDAQ setup time is drastically reduced. You plug in the chassis, load NI-DAQmx drivers, and begin collecting data within minutes. Integration with LabVIEW, Python, or FlexLogger makes the path from hardware to visualization short and intuitive.
For me, this has been a game-changer—removing barriers to testing so projects move faster and engineers can focus on solving problems rather than troubleshooting instruments.
Cost pressures are unavoidable in test engineering, but NI CompactDAQ provides a smarter path forward. Hardware consolidation, scalability, lower maintenance, and faster setup all add up to meaningful savings without sacrificing performance.
That’s why at Ball Systems we continue to turn to cDAQ for projects where budgets matter, but reliability and capability cannot be compromised.
Next up in this series: Flexibility That Keep NI CompactDAQ Relevant.
Want to see how Ball Systems has deployed cDAQ in real projects? Visit our Project Gallery.