Can LabVIEW be used instead of an oscilloscope to measure signals?
Sort of, but you won't be really happy with it.
LabVIEW only replaces the display end of an oscilloscope. You need a data acquisition card to take the place of the oscilloscope hardware - you know that since you've already picked out a NI DAQ.
The DAQ you picked out appears to be digital IO only, so it wouldn't be much good as an oscilloscope.
In any event, there's not a full featured oscilloscope program for LabVIEW that you could use. You'd have to implement it yourself.
A good (and fast) data acquisition card from NI would cost as much as a (low end) regular oscilloscope - and the low end scope would perform better as an oscilloscope than LabVIEW and some home grown VI.
Suitable Labview acquisition cards are even more expensive than scopes.
For instance, here's one that could be used as a scope, though a lousy one:
- Input range ±10 V, ±5 V, ±2 V, ±1 V.
- 2 analog outputs, 16 bit, max. 500 kS/s (one channel) or 250 kS/s per channel. Range ±10 V.
I could probably live with ±10 V range, and 16-bit is better than most cheap scopes. However, only two channels at 250 kS/s mean it cannot display anything faster than audio.
Note that the price tag is 500€, which can get you a decent scope with 1GS/s (three orders of magnitude faster!) and 4 channels. For comparison, a LabView card with such specs would set you back around $10'000.
If you don't want to use a dedicated aquisition board and only have limited requirements concerning samplerate/bandwidth/resplution/etc. you could use the audio-in to measure analog sinals. You should make sure to not exceed the audio port's ratings (which are +-1.5V if I remember right). This of course does not replace a professional oscilloscope or data aquisition cards, but it's pretty much for free .
Though you could use any programming language to read the data, LabVIEW might be a good choice if you have access and are used to it. Recording audio and plotting .wav files is straight forward in the student's edition.