If you want to ramp and dwell, you can go on ebay and get a pretty badass multipoint controller for cheap. I just got 4 of them for my lab this way last week; cost me about $150 but it would have been over $3000 new. University surplus is awesome!
Like DiverDude suggested, I would consider going the microcontroller unit. The easiest to work with is the Arduino. It costs $50 and is EXTREMELY flexible in what is can do. You could make an Arduino do exactly what you want for next to nothing! Hell, you could even control the thing from the comfort of you laptop.
|