Reliable, tailored testing of one's own products - in realtime - March 2001

Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

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Reliable, tailored testing of one's own products - in realtime

March 2001 Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

Traditionally, test instruments have been vendor-defined with a specific set of functions. With the revolution of virtual instrumentation, engineers may now define their own test systems to create solutions to exactly fit their needs.

LabVIEW RT allows the user to create their own custom instrument, with the flexibility of LabVIEW graphical programming and the realtime reliability and performance of an embedded realtime operating system. Users can easily integrate deterministic realtime components into their test applications. The software combines the ease-of-use and flexibility of LabVIEW graphical programming with the reliability and performance of a realtime operating system.

When there is a requirement to add realtime I/O to a production test application, it is very useful to be able to easily shift between Windows and independent, realtime hardware. With the LabVIEW development environment, engineers use the same programming techniques for a realtime system that they would use for the rest of their test application. Anything from a few I/O points (with some intelligence) to a complex large-channel-count realtime box, may readily be developed for user's test applications in LabVIEW RT on Windows. The application is then downloaded, to run in realtime on independent data acquisition hardware.

Since LabVIEW code can be embedded, users can separate the realtime components of their test. This separation increases performance, in addition to running critical sections of test without interruption.

Realtime configurations

LabVIEW RT consists of two components - the development system that runs on a Windows computer, and the RT Engine that runs in a realtime operating system kernel, which is embedded on a hardware target. The user develops and debugs in Windows, then executes in realtime by downloading and running the code on the target.

Two configurations deliver rapid development of realtime systems and off-the-shelf data acquisition hardware for faster time-to-market and easier long-term maintenance and scalability of systems.

The first configuration is a Windows computer with LabVIEW RT installed and an RT Series data acquisition (DAQ) board plugged into that computer. This configuration adds a realtime component to an existing Windows system. In addition to the RT Series DAQ board, the Windows application could be controlling plug-in instruments, vision, motion, and other hardware.

The second configuration is LabVIEW RT installed on a Windows computer and downloading code via Ethernet to run on a separate PXI controller. This configuration offers a complete realtime system with any combination of available National Instruments PXI plug-in data acquisition cards. The realtime controller also has serial RS232 ports, a GPIB port and hard disk. This system can run standalone as a headless device, or it can communicate via TCP/IP over the built-in Ethernet port to LabVIEW for Windows application on another computer.

This configuration helps expand existing test systems quickly. With the Ethernet-based realtime controller, users can easily add modern test equipment and procedures to their existing platform. For example, if there is already a successful Unix-based tester, it would be easy to integrate PXI with realtime via Ethernet.

National Instruments

082 877 8530

[email protected]

www.ni.com/southafrica

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Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

Reliable, tailored testing of one's own products - in realtime

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