Posted by John McHale
IRVINE, Calif. 18 March 2010. Engineers at EADS North America released a modular test-system platform called Racal Instruments 1830 Source/Measure Switch. It is used for automated test equipment for design validation or manufacturing.
The test system provides improved functionality over other modular test systems at a lower price, EADS North America officials say.
Switching configurations are expandable on the 1830 through the use of the signal raceway analog bus to as large as an 8 by 162 or 4 by 324 matrix or as much as a 576 channel multiplexer. Switching solutions include matrix and multiplexer as well as power and discrete. As many as four instruments can be installed internally and fully connected to switch channels via the signal raceway analog bus allowing for channel and throughput scalability to factors of nine and four. If different measurement types or ranges are needed, throughput is further increased as time consuming range and function changes are avoided.
The 1830 also has an internal signal raceway analog bus to remove cabling and parasitics. The new system accommodates as many aso nine switch plug-ins providing a scalable switching solution. The plug-ins are easy to install by hand directly at the rear of the instrument. The 1830 also includes a set of enhanced switching and instrumentation features that are accessible both remotely via a test program and locally via embedded scripts.
Features include USB, Ethernet (LXI Class C), and GPIB connectivity. IVI-C, IVI-COM, and ActivATE Test Platform drivers are supplied to support popular program development environments such as the Visual C++ development system, the Visual Studio .Net development system, the LabVIEW development system, the LabWindows/CVI development system, and the ActivATE Test Platform.
The feature set includes native SCPI commands and scripting; path level switching at IVI and local SCPI level; web page access with LXI Class C; scalable switching and instrumentation; measurement capability with future roadmap; advanced signal Raceway analog bus support for parallel measurement; and LXI web page control.
For more information visit http://www.eads-nadefense.com/.
