Product category:
Board-Level Instruments
News Release from: Keithley Instruments | Subject: KPXI products
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 November 2006
PXI products hold hybrid test systems
together
Keithley Instruments has released a new line of PXI products designed for high speed automated production testing as part of a hybrid test system using precision instruments.
Keithley Instruments has released a new line of PXI products designed for high speed automated production testing as part of a hybrid test system using precision instruments Test engineers and designers can combine the high-speed data acquisition and tight trigger synchronisation features of the new KPXI products with the precision measurement capabilities in Keithley instruments for a superior hybrid test system architecture
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 19 Jun 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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Keithley is currently the only major instrumentation supplier to offer a broad range of precision measurement and high-speed data acquisition solutions, including PXI, LXI, PCI, USB and GPIB.
The new Keithley KPXI product line consists of simultaneous data acquisition boards, multifunction analogue I/O boards, high speed analogue output boards, a 130Msample/s digitiser module, digital I/O modules, PXI chassis, embedded PC controllers, MXI bridges (for remote PC control), and GPIB interface cards.
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KPXI products are designed for optimal integration with precision instrumentation, such as Keithley's Series 2600 System SourceMeter multichannel I/V test solutions, which feature TSP and TSP-Link that let users program and execute high-speed, automated test sequences across multiple channels - independent of a PC operating system and its associated communication delays.
This flexibility gives test engineers the freedom to design systems that maximise throughput and precision with a variety of instruments and data acquisition products, using distributed programming and concurrent execution.
"Today's production test engineers are under increasing pressure to maximise test throughput and move products to market more quickly", states Mark Cejer, Director of Marketing for Keithley Instruments.
"Yet, in addition to determining the types of measurement to be made, they must grapple with the complications of selecting the type of instrumentation and computer interface that will provide the best combination of performance and speed".
"With Keithley's mix of industry-leading precision measurement products, plus PXI, LXI, and GPIB solutions, engineers can rely on just one vendor for virtually everything they need to create a hybrid test system that is optimised for their application".
The Keithley KPXI product line adheres to the PXI Standard (PCI Extensions for Instrumentation), based on the industry standard PCI interface.
Keithley KPXI products include software examples and drivers that work with LabView, Microsoft.net, Visual Basic and C programming languages.
The KPXI product line consists of the following.
KPXI-SDAQ simultaneous analogue I/O boards offer parallel channel data collection at up to 16bit resolution, plus analogue outputs and digital I/O.
Separate channel and gain queues allow reuse of channels on different ranges in a single scan for simplified programming and improved throughput.
KPXI-DAQ multifunction boards have multiplexed analogue inputs for sampling rates up to 3Msample/s for high-speed applications requiring up to 96 channels, plus analogue outputs, D I/O, and counter/timers.
These boards provide at least a 50% speed advantage over most competitive products, and the lowest cost per channel in many applications.
The KPXI-AO family of boards supplies analogue outputs at a rate up to 1Msample/s, which constitutes a 1000x faster update rate than is available from PCI or USB offerings.
This supplies waveform quality outputs well matched to the instrument capabilities inherent in hybrid systems.
The KPXI-AI digitiser module enables sampling up to 130Msample/s, and has latching digital inputs that are synchronised with the analogue measurements.
It has 14bit resolution and comes with an onboard memory of 512Mbyte that allows longer continuous sampling than comparable products.
The KPXI-DIO digital I/O group of modules provides a variety of digital I/O functions and features, including timers and relay outputs.
All boards use the same driver for simplicity, and provide high-speed handshaking for faster communications and test times with instruments in hybrid systems.
The 3U KPXI-SYPXI chassis provides up to 18 slots with solid performance and better pricing than most competing offerings, particularly when used in larger systems.
The KPXI-CON family includes embedded PC controllers, and MXI bridges for remote PC control.
The embedded controllers have preloaded hard drive backup software, WIN XP, KI-DAQ drivers, and test code examples.
They are test proven in hybrid systems for high reliability.
The KPXI-488 is an IEEE488 compatible interface that allows easy connection to GPIB instruments to create high performance hybrid systems without communication problems.
Availability is from stock. Request a free brochure from Keithley Instruments ...
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