Ambient ionization may be beneficial or detrimental depending on its causes, due to this, it is necessary to do an efficient monitoring of the quantity of ions in the air. The authors explain how they monitored an ionized environment: they designed and implemented a Virtual Instrumentation System, developed on the LabView programming platform with a data acquisition interface, and used a differential neon lamp sensor
with its corresponding electronic analysis. The value added by this prototype in terms of innovation is the use of neon lamps as ionization sensors instead of the traditional De Geiger Muller tube. The software is original and the interface was developed in Colombia. This paper stems from the research project “Ionization as
a conservative agent for papaya”, carried out by the Universidad de los Llanos in 2007.
Keywords:
automation, electronic control, virtual instrumentation, ionization, differential sensors