The NCAR In-Situ Data Acquisition Software (NIDAS) was developed at the NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) for support of data acquisition from a large variety of atmospheric science research instrumentation on aircraft and surface platforms.

NIDAS was designed to be scalable for sampling a small to large number of instruments, adaptable to diverse network configurations and data bandwidths, capable of high-bandwidth sampling with high accuracy time-tags, with support for multiple I/O buses and data acquisition expansion cards, a small footprint for compatibility with low-power, embedded processors, and adaptable to distributed displays and processing.

The continued development and dependability for high cost-per-minute aircraft missions and long-term, unattended surface deployments have resulted in its role as a primary data acquisition system for over 30 field projects since 2006, including such diverse and cutting-edge studies as the Hiaper Pole to Pole Observation (HIPPO) missions and the Horizontal Array Turbulence Studies (CHATS, AHATS).

This presentation will provide an overview of NIDAS, summarizing the supported instrumentation, sampling methods and rates, network interfaces, system processors, I/O buses and expansion cards, with a discussion of the overall open-source software design and its strengths and weaknesses. The presentation will also address the availability of NIDAS to the community and plans for the future.