In order to monitor the working state of piston motor and measure its instantaneous rotation speed accurately, the measuring principle and method of instantaneous rotation speed based on industrial personal computer and data acquisition card are introduced, and the major error source, influence mechanism and processing method of data quantization error are dis- cussed. By means of hybrid programming approach of LabVIEW and MATLAB, the instantaneous rotation speed measurement system for the piston motor in variable speed hydraulic system is designed. The simulation and experimental results show that the designed instantaneous speed measurement system is feasible. Furthermore, the sampling frequency has an important influ- ence on the instantaneous rotation speed measurement of piston motor and higher sampling frequency can lower quantization er- ror and improve measurement accuracy.
