I have done serial data acquisition with matlab and use if for data processing. Do you have the acquisition toolbox? That will likely be a first step in getting the matlab workspace to "talk" to your daq card. You might also look at the mathworks website (/matlabcentral) for advise. There are people "there" who do this type of thing (specific to Matlab) on a regular basis... Sorry moderator if links to "other" websites aren't allowed... If your daq is NI, they have some decent tools which are competitive in pricing to mathworks stuff...