Real time adc for RPI

Question

I'm thinking about a project with RPI. I need 4 or 6 analog inputs with sample rate between 500 and 1000 samples per second and 2 or 4 digital output as response of processing the input signals. Between 100 and 300 responses per second.

I reviewed this board , but I'm not sure if RPI achieves real time processing. My questions are?

1. RPI needs a RT kernel?
2. Is it necessary an independent board (maybe this arduino?) with RT adc to send the sampled values with a certain sample rate to RPI?
3. Or 1 and 2 together.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'd go for idea 2, using an Arduino for the ADC and something fast on the Pi (maybe C if you don't mind getting your hands dirty) to do the processing, and communicate between the two using serial (there are a few blog posts/instructables on how to hook up an Arduino to a Pi via serial). IIRC it's just enabling some options in the boot.txt on the Pi and getting baud rate right on both of them.