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I'm trying to define C# interfaces of ADC, and I need some help since I don't use them a lot.

What I want to know, basically, it's what kind of ADC exist, but not the electrical specifications or processes that make the conversion possible, I'm more interested on the kind of interactions we could have with an ADC.

With my knowledge I know that an ADC it's composed by resolution bits, reference voltage to the max value of a sample and channels (optional).

But some of them need to be "warmed up" (usually start/stop conversion) before we read the sample, and some of them have an asynchronous way of knowing when the sample is ready while others need to be pooled (e.g. by reading a register that haves the READY flag).

Some of them are mapped in memory, some of them are external.

Can you tell me another characteristics of ADCs?

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If you're trying to write a generic description of all ADCs, don't bother. It's not possible (there are too many variants). If you constrain yourself to one type of ADC, with one type of interface, you may have better luck (at least until a manufacturer releases a new device that breaks you categorization system). – Connor Wolf May 4 '12 at 1:35
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Also, C# and raw ADC interfacing? What the heck are you doing? – Connor Wolf May 4 '12 at 1:35
The only A/D interface that in the computer is your game port and the sound card. You could use C# to program it,and access it. – sandun dhammika May 4 '12 at 2:29
You also show some misunderstandings: an ADC is not composed by resolution bits, it's only a specification. And how can you describe the analog part in C#? How can you describe ANYTHING of it in C#? – clabacchio♦ May 4 '12 at 6:23
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Even less clear now – clabacchio♦ May 4 '12 at 9:22
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1 Answer

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog-to-digital_converter

depends on what your application needs. See also:

Audio converter Beta encoder Digital signal processing Quantization (signal processing) Modem Differential linearity Sample-and-hold amplifier Ideal sampler Integral linearity

YOu need more background to ask a better question.

But in simple terms. Command goes to ADC to take a reading and ADC responds when conversion is done. Then you read the data. and repeat. So it is a polled response mode. Faster ones are synchronous to some frame rate. More accurate cheaper ADC's use 1 bit converter with sigma delta changes to level.

Older slow but accurate ones use Integrate and Dump method which is used in communication systems where Signal noise is critical and you integrate over the entire interval of data.

Yet again more common are Successive Approximation Registers or SAR type ADCs.

And finally there are Flash converters which use a comparator for every threshold and decoded to binary separate outputs and used in ultra high speed ADC's. [Gbps]

Then there are ADC's implemented in Hardware such as cell phones with lots of signal processing using AD or TI DSP chips.

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