Product category:
Board-Level Instruments
News Release from: Strategic Test | Subject: UF-2030
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 03 August 2006
Digitiser cards sample speedily
Digitiser cards use multiple 8bit ADCs with maximum sampling rates of 100Msample/s or 200Msample/s in interleave mode.
Strategic Test Corp has released two new digitiser cards using multiple 8bit ADCs with maximum sampling rates of 100Msample/s or 200Msample/s in interleave mode Based on the new UF2 series carrier card, it uses a PCI-X (66MHz/32bit PCI) bus that can continuously transfer data to the host PC at up to 225Msample/s
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 4 Jul 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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Ultra-fast sampling board runs up to 125Mbit/s
The UF.7021 is a full-length PCI board with 64 digital input or output channels that can simultaneously capture and replay signals at a maximum sample rate of 125Mbit/s.
The advantage being that the user can record longer signals at high-speed to cheap PC RAM instead of buying additional digitiser card memory.
It is also possible to continuously record for hours to hard disks setup in a RAID configuration at up to 105Msample/s per second (one hour recording at 200Msample/s would occupy 37.8Gbyte disk space).
The two new card are available immediately.
Further reading
16bit acquisition cards for simultaneous sampling
A new series of data acquisition cards from Strategic Test has been designed for measurements that require simultaneous sampling at a maximum sampling rate of 1MHz.
Onboard RTOS puts card in charge of testing
The new MAX6pci data acquisition card can be configured with one or more MAX-PC CPU modules to handle time- or safety-critical tasks on a test rig.
Ultra-fast performance from arbitrary board
The UF6000 is a high-speed arbitrary waveform generator board from Strategic Test.
The UF-2030 can record on two channels at 100Msample/s or 1 channel at 200Msample/s, while the UF-2031 can record on four channels at 100Msample/s or two channels at 200Msample/s.
Each card comes with 64Msample (64Mbyte) signal memory as standard which is sufficient to achieve the stated streaming performance.
At combined sample rates higher than the PCI-X bus transfer rate, the signals can be recorded to onboard memory and offloaded later.
The card memory can be expanded to 4Gsample (4Gbyte) using a proprietary DIMM module.
An important common feature to all UF2 cards is that all of the card memory can be used by the active channels, so that a four channel card used with two active channels can record for twice the measurement time.
The cards are supplied with drivers for Microsoft Windows and Linux, with free downloads of future OS version drivers such as Windows Vista.
Drivers for Matlab, LabView, VEE, DasyLab and LabWindows/CVI are available as cost options.
Each input channel has its own ADC and amplifier.
This ensures true simultaneous recording on all channels and allows the user to program the input voltage range and DC voltage offset to best match each sensor.
Up to 16 cards can be configured as a synchronous system of up to 64 channels, sharing a common internal or external clock.
It is possible to set trigger conditions on multiple cards combined with and/or, a feature often used in production test processes.
Apart from the external trigger that is standard on all UF2 cards, each channel can be programmed with edge, window, slope and pulsewidth triggers.
A re-arm trigger condition has been introduced on the UF2 series that reduces the possibility of false triggering on noisy signals.
While many digitiser cards have fixed sample rate ranges, the UltraFast cards have always allowed the user to use a fine resolution sampling rate.
The resolution depends on the chosen sample rate (an application note is available on request).
The user simply programs the sampling rate required and the driver adjusts the onboard PLL and hardware driver to deliver the closest clock possible.
The new UF2 series employs a new design that has even finer resolution and also offers the possibility to install a user specific quartz when an exact sampling rate is required by the application - a feature that is unique.
A number of application specific cost options are available.
Multiple recording uses a memory segmentation technique to allow recording of a high-speed series of, say, RADAR signals.
Gated sampling only records when the external gate TTL signal supplied by external equipment goes high or low (user definable).
The ABA mode was known on traditional transient recorders, but until now has not been available on PCI cards.
Introduced in the UF2 series, it allows a slow and fast sampling rate to be defined so that memory is conserved prior to the trigger event and the critical signal recorded at the faster required sampling rate.
The BaseIO option is most often used to control external equipment or to read/write status signals.
It adds eight TTL lines programmable directionally in two 4bit groups.
Finally, the Timestamp option is used to record the time that each trigger occurs, but can also be fed with a GPS time signal to synchronise multiple cards operated at different locations.
The Ultrafast UF2 cards are available immediately and have the following price ranges: two channels (UF2-2030 $4290), four channels (UF2-2031 $6990) and eight channel (UF2-3132 $10390).
All prices depend on the Euro/US-dollar exchange rate.
Volume discounts and OEM customisation prices are available on request.
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