DAQ Filtering and Signal Smoothing

A raw DAQ channel is rarely the value you want to store. Counts need a scale and an offset to become engineering units. Mains hum, quantisation and a vibrating mount need a filter before a trend or a controller will behave. MatDeck applies that conditioning in the same document as the hardware form, using DSP functions and filter forms rather than a separate processing tool.

Typical steps are: convert to engineering units, remove a DC bias, smooth with a moving average or a low-pass IIR, then optionally estimate one clean value from several related sensors. The filtered channel keeps the original sample timing, so the log, the chart and the SCADA tag all show the same series.

DSP filter applied to an acquired signal — Filter running on an acquired signal

IIR filtering form embedded in a document — IIR filtering form embedded in the document

Filtering belongs before logging when the archive should store the cleaned measurement, and it can also be applied later when the raw record must be kept. Both orders are ordinary script steps once the channel exists.