NI increases accuracy and bandwidth

November 2010 Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration

PXI Express data acquisition module for high channel count strain, load, and pressure measurement systems.

National Instruments has introduced the NI PXIe-4331, the latest in the NI SC Express family of high-performance data acquisition (DAQ) modules with built-in signal conditioning. The DAQ device is a simultaneous high-speed bridge input module that provides signal conditioning for dynamic measurements from strain, pressure, torque and load sensors. The NI PXIe-4331 increases the speed of bridge-based measurements and, with PXI Express, provides 250 MB/s of dedicated bandwidth per device to give engineers the freedom to increase channel count without compromising sampling rates or data throughput.

The PXIe-4331 features eight channels with 24-bit analogue to digital converters (ADCs) per channel and 102,4 kS/s per channel sampling rate. To improve accuracy and reject noise, the module offers antialiasing and digital filters for all channels. Additionally, the module includes an independent programmable 0,625 to 10 V excitation voltage on each channel for flexibility and fault protection. The 8-channel bridge input module can scale to a 136-channel system in a single chassis and thousands of channels when synchronising across multiple chassis. The simultaneous sampling, high sample rate and channel synchronisation features make the module ideal for structural test applications such as fatigue and impact test, design validation and other dynamic tests. These applications are common in industries such as automotive, aerospace, defence and renewable energy.

The module includes NI-DAQmx driver software with support for multidevice tasks, making it possible for engineers to synchronise multiple modules and combine the NI PXIe-4331 module with a variety of NI hardware including other SC Express modules, NI X Series DAQ devices, dynamic signal acquisition products and more than 1500 types of I/O available on the PXI platform. It also integrates with other NI software including NI LabVIEW, the LabVIEW Real-Time Module and NI DIAdem.

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