Product category:
Board-Level Instruments
News Release from: Microstar Laboratories | Subject: DAPstudio 2.5
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 03 April 2006
Measurement software aids test
visualisation
Available now from Microstar Laboratories, DAPstudio 2.5 is the latest release of the DAP Measurement Studio application.
Available now from Microstar Laboratories, DAPstudio 2.5 is the latest release of the DAP Measurement Studio application DAPstudio 2.5 displays live data in several formats, including bar graph, line graph and waterfall
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 14 Jul 2000 at 8.00am (UK)
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Each format has an optional 3D view.
The 3D view makes it easy to see different shapes on different channels.
With the flat view users can measure values more precisely.
Further reading
Board and software enable real-time acquisition
The combination of the DAP 840 board with the new DAPstudio software is a development and runtime package to create the real-time solution users need and the Windows product they want.
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Tool buttons let users toggle between the views.
The waterfall line-graph implementation gives a quick overview of millions of data points through a moving window, and lets users look at spectra over both frequency and time simultaneously.
Optional rotating colours for the waveforms in a waterfall graph allow a specific spectrum to move back in time with the same colour.
DAPstudio makes it easy to develop a PC-based measurement system with one or more DAP boards.
Each DAP board gives the system an additional processor running a real-time operating system - DAPL - that can be controlled from a Windows application.
This extra resource gives room to make applications even better.
It frees the application from system delays.
It lets users apply computing power when and where needed.
It means users can sample data and control a process anywhere, anytime.
Users can analyse spectra in real time.
The application responds reliably: in time, every time.
Two or more DAP boards, in the same PC or on a network, can work together as a single synchronised system using DAP-to-DAP communications.
DAPstudio can also run a system from a PC on the network - with no other software.
Microstar Laboratories recently delivered a 16-board system to a customer with exactly that requirement.
This 128-channel system acquires simultaneous samples of 16bit data at high speed with an input range from +/-10mV to +/-10V on every channel.
If the application has many inputs, many outputs, or many inputs and outputs, users will find DAPstudio especially helpful.
With just a few mouse movements, users can select and deselect channels, set all or some of them to certain values, apply gains selectively, and so on.
Then DAPstudio documents the system as perfectly formed DAPL commands that configure the DAP to behave precisely as you intend it to at run-time.
Users can choose whether to look at these commands or simply to save them as part of a working DAP configuration without even reviewing them.
DAP boards acquire data by converting analogue signals into digital values.
These stream through conceptual pipes that you set up in DAPstudio.
The onboard processor performs any required operations as it transfers data from pipe to pipe.
Users choose these operations from the more than 100 available in DAPL.
A typical application may require six or seven of them.
The commands issued to DAPL determine exactly what low-level tasks the DAP will perform.
The commands configure the DAP for the application.
DAPstudio lets users specify commands by clicking on the appropriate tools as they design the system, and it then lets them save the working configuration as a complete DAP application.
At each step in the development process, the next step presents itself as both obvious and compelling.
DAPstudio Version 2.5 costs US $199, and the full version can be downloaded for a free trial.
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