Examples of instrumentation as input devices.
Computers can receive input through other devices that produce electrical output. For example, a piano keyboard or electric guitar can be equipped to send signals to a computer as the musical instrument is played. The computer can process the signals to record the notes that were played. Similarly, a computer can capture the output produced by a machine operator who presses buttons or turns a wheel to control a robot or mechanical piece of equipment.
Sensors as input devices.
Sensors - Humans sense light, sound, smell, taste and touch. Computers can also sense characteristics of their environment. Input sensors for computers are devices such as microphones, electromagnetic receivers, pressure sensors, chemical sensors, and temperature sensors that respond to the environment with a signal that a computer can interpret.
Potential applications of microphones (sound sensors) include monitoring mechanical equipment, such as turbines, processing) data, saving and replaying voice messages or recorded concerts, and recognizing and responding to data or commands spoken by a human.
A provider of office products, found that a voice-based warehouse management system installed in its Detroit warehouse increased worker productivity by 40% and reduced errors by 73%. Warehouse workers use a headset with a microphone that gives them hands-free ability to communicate with a central computer about what stock to pick.
Often use electromagnetic sensors to read radio frequency ID tags, which are more durable and reliable than bar codes. Uses RFID tags (электронная метка) rather than bar codes for its clothing so sensors in the changing room can detect which clothes are hanging in the rooms’ interactive closets without the customer having to scan them.
Application of Pressure Sensors - Include touch-screen devices, pen-based input devices, intelligent scales, and control systems for aircraft and missiles
Sensors that measure moisture, temperature, chemical compositions, and almost any form of sensory data can convert their readings into digital signals that can then pass to a computer.
Manufacturing industries use sensor technologies extensively to collect data about and to automate manufacturing processes. Sensors can also detect brave wave patterns and intensity. Computers can use such sensors to respond to people’s thoughts.
Measuring storage, units of information.
Measuring Storage - Sequences of bits whose value can be zero or one, can represent all information. Bits can represent letters, numbers and other characters. Codes that use only seven bits can represent 128 different characters. Two coding systems that use eight bits have become industry standards.
ASCII code ( American Standard Code for Information Interchange) - Most PC use a code called ASCII to represent characters.
EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) - IBM uses a code called EBCDIC for its largest computers. Some other manufacturers too.
Byte - Because of the historical widespread use of these eight-bit coding schemes, we measure storage capacity in bytes, where one byte equals eight bits.
Have been increasing or plan to increase their data storage by >33% a year.
Some of them grow by 50% a year.
Wal-Mart’s data warehouse held 7.5 terabytes of the company inventory, forecast, customer, competitor, and market basket information in 2001.