PC-Based Measurement Solutions
Ultra-Accurate... By Design
Ultra-Accurate... By Design
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Advances in Ultra-Accurate Temperature Measurement Design Temperature is the world's most widely measured property. Most temperature measurement instruments deployed today rely on technology architectures developed when silicon-based devices were far more costly and DOS ran computers. New approaches to analog design have changed this paradigm. This paper describes how the latest techniques in analog technology can be applied to the development of ultra-accurate temperature measurement instruments. |
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AMS2750D Temperature Uniformity Surveys using TEMPpoint Industrial process furnaces and ovens require uniform temperature and heating; This is critical to repeatable product performance from batch to batch. These furnaces require periodic inspection for temperature uniformity. Using TEMPpoint to monitor temperatures over time according to AMS2750D specifications fits this application perfectly. |
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Avoid Pitfalls in Precision Temperature Measurement Exact temperature measurement in many scientific, industrial, and commercial applications has driven the hunt for ultra accurate temperature measurement equipment capable of reading changes of a fraction of a degree Celsius. In addition, temperature measurement and control solutions must be easy to implement and use by both novice users and experienced engineers. New equipment and standards such as LXI have made a challenging task possible. |
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Benefits and Potential Dangers of Using USB for Test & Measurement Applications USB is one of the fastest growing standards within the computer and electronics industries today. But, beware – it also contains some potential dangers that can cause catastrophic results depending on your application. Galvanic isolation is the key to avoiding this danger. |
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Benefits of Simultaneous Data Acquisition When choosing a data acquisition board, many different selection criteria are used. Speed, resolution, accuracy, and number of channels are all important considerations. For many applications, a simultaneous acquisition device is certainly the architecture of choice due to its inherent speed and accuracy. |
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Benefits of the PCI Bus for Data Acquisition The PCI bus is a board-level expansion standard with important benefits to anyone whose work involves PC-based data acquisition or image processing. The high-bandwidth of the PCI bus allows simultaneous, real-time gathering of gap-free analog and digital input data, along with outputs for analog stimuli and digital control. |
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Benefits of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) for Data Acquisition USB devices are external to the computer – there is no need to open up the computer to install them. This external location also provides performance benefits for noise-sensitive devices like data acquisition peripherals. In minutes, and with state-of-the-art accuracy, you're capturing data: temperature, pressure, or sound. |
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Channel to Channel Accuracy When you need to measure temperature from multiple channels with precision, you want high accuracy and minimal variation from one channel to another. |
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Choosing Data Acquisition Boards and Software Data acquisition boards help you measure real-world information represented by analog signals. The analog signals come from sensors or transducers that convert temperature, pressure, sound, vibration etc into voltage. The electronic sampling of analog signals is called A/D conversion or analog-to-digital conversion. A/D conversion changes real-world analog voltages into digital codes for computer processing and storage. |
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Customizing TEMPpoint Application with Company Logo This application note describes how one company turned the TEMPpoint ready-to-measure application into their own custom chart recorder used for measuring furnace temperatures for uniformity surveys. |
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Data Acquisition: Gotchas for USB Measurements USB provides test engineers with an inexpensive, easy-to-use, highs peed bus standard for PC-based test and measurement systems. The standard, however, does not mandate signal-circuit isolation. Isolation protects your PC from damage and preserves the integrity of the data by physically separating electrical connections between circuits, thereby eliminating potentially harmful voltage or current from flowing through your system. |
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Embedded Signal Processing System: Build or Buy? Engineers confronting the need to add real-time signal processing capabilities to a product will consider the build-to-buy question. |
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ENOB (Effective Number Of Bits) – The Accurate Way to Choose a Data Acquisition Board In choosing a data acquisition board, there is probably no more important specification than its overall accuracy – that is, how closely the output data reflects the input signal. Your vibration analysis, sensor readings, audio recording, and temperature measurements can be no more accurate then your data acquisition board. |
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Gas Analyzer Simulation Using Measure Foundry A worldwide producer of gas analyzer systems, wanted to test their analyzers without having to introduce real gas into the system. This would save time, money, and create a safer work environment. |
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High-Performance Data Acquisition on USB A common belief among engineers is that to get the best performance, a PC based data acquisition module must plug into the PCI bus. Properly implemented, however, a data acquisition module can use the PC’s USB 2.0 port to pump data into a PC as fast as PCI-based cards. The keys to achieving this performance are a hardware USB interface on the module and optimized driver software for the host system. |
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LXI system setup is quick and easy: a complete example LXI-compliant instruments demonstrate predictable operation and behavior that make them easy to set up, configure, and debug. Find out just how easy it is. |
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Measuring Dynamic Performance This white paper describes the importance of AC specifications when measuring dynamic performance, including the Nyquist theorem. Also, in applications where you want to measure rapidly changing and/or high frequency signals, ENOB (Effective Number of Bits) and SFDR (Spurious Free Dynamic Range) specifications can help you characterize dynamic performance. |
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Real-Time DSP Data Acquisition for High-Speed Host Transfer The architecture of a data acquisition system utilizing the processing capability of a DSP chip has existed for many years. The ability to do this in a local loop in real time is available today with chips such as the Texas Instrument floating-point TMS320C6713. |
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Subject-Oriented Software Development System for DSP Data acquisition for real-time applications on a DSP board is an engineering challenge. Data Translation has resolved this dilemma by creating its own DSP subject-oriented software development system. This system lets users access sophisticated DSP algorithms from the standard Windows® world. |
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Temperature Uniformity Monitoring: Biotech A leading biotechnology company needed to evaluate freeze-dryers from a number of suppliers to select the best performing product for use in their processes to develop/monitor biological therapies. Temperature uniformity was considered the key indicator of product performance. |
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Temperature Uniformity Monitoring: Composite Curing Oven A leading supplier of advanced composite materials was developing a new composite material and needed to get two, large curing ovens up and running to get their product to market quickly. Temperature uniformity was considered the key measurement requirement when evaluating the curing process. |
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Testing Lithium-Ion Batteries using TEMPpoint Advances in battery technology have revolutionized the consumer market – powering products such as cell phones and laptops to hybrid cars. Lithium-ion batteries are the predominant power source for these devices because of their ability to store a great deal of energy in a compact, light package. Find out how a major manufacturer overcame testing difficulties using TEMPpoint for temperature data acquisition. |
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The Battle for Data Fidelity: Understanding the SFDR Specification As A/D converters (ADC) and data acquisition boards increase their bandwidth, more and more are including the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) specification as an indicator of their fidelity. The key to properly interpreting this specification lies in understanding the sources of spurious signals and how SFDR is measured. |
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The Evolution of Virtual Instrumentation A virtual instrumentation system is computer software that a user would employ to develop a computerized test and measurement system, for controlling from a computer desktop an external measurement hardware device, and for displaying test or measurement data collected by the external device on instrument-like panels on a computer screen. |
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Using MATLAB for Vibration Measurements Vibration measurements are critical in predictive maintenance and diagnostic fault testing applications for quality assurance. Typical vibration applications use IEPE (ICPTM) accelerometers to measure vibration and when coupled with MATLAB®, a well known interactive software environment for data acquisition and analysis, report generation, and test system development, provide a complete set of tools for acquiring and analyzing vibration measurements. |
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Using Quadrature Encoders/Decoders For X/Y Positioning and Rotation A quadrature encoder is device used to sense position and rotation by converting displacement into digital pulses. A quadrature decoder takes the output signals from the quadrature encoder as inputs and converts these signals into a numerical value that can be used to determine position, distance, velocity, and other parameters. This paper describes how to use the quadrature decoders on the DT9836 Series module with a quadrature encoder to determine x/y position and rotation information. |
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Why ISO-Channel Technology is Your Best Return on Investment. When connecting signal sources it is important to eliminate the sources of error that can contribute to inaccuracies in your measurements. In most measurement instruments, this burden is on the customer. Instruments that use ISO-Channel technology solve this problem for you – saving you tremendous setup and debug time and reducing costly grounding problems when connecting signals. |