TechBlog

Test engineers in industries ranging from aerospace and defense to consumer electronics are facing the challenge of testing increasingly complicated designs with shrinking timelines and budgets. To address these issues, engineers and scientists are incorporating new test and measurement technologies that are capable of meeting complex design requirements without raising costs. National Instruments (NI) has identified five trends it anticipates will significantly influence the test and measurement industry over the next three years.”Companies are turning to the latest technologies including PXI, FPGAs and multicore processors to develop high-performance test systems that can meet consumer demand for higher-quality products,” said Eric Starkloff, National Instruments director of test product marketing.

“Fortunately, more technology vendors are developing industry-standard tools capable of solving problems that previously depended on expensive, dedicated test systems.”

Continue reading ‘Test And Measurement Industry Trends Toward Software-Defined Instrumentation’ »

Industry:
Research, Machines/Mechanics

Products:
Data Acquisition, Real-Time Module, R Series, LabVIEW, SoftMotion Controllers, PXI/CompactPCI, FPGA Module

The Challenge:
Measuring and controlling, in real time, the position of bulk components to absorb energetic particles out of the nominal beam core with high reliability and accuracy at the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The Solution:
Using LabVIEW, the LabVIEW Real-Time Module, the LabVIEW FPGA Module, and NI SoftMotion software with NI R Series reconfigurable I/O hardware for PXI to develop an FPGA-based motion control system capable of intercepting misguided or unstable particle beams.

“We selected the LabVIEW and PXI solution for the deployment platform due to the small size, ruggedness, and cost savings over the traditional VME and programmable logic controller-based model. “

Continue reading ‘CERN Uses NI LabVIEW Software and PXI Hardware to Control World’s Largest Particle Accelerator’ »