December, 2011
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Page 61 Customizing COTS Testing Systems By Jeff Elliott
ate automated test and measure- ment systems are designed to be gen- eral purpose, programmable, and flexible enough to handle a variety of input ranges and types, speeds, and functions. At first blush, these modular off-
O
the-shelf instruments may seem ready-to-go for instrument manufac- turers or test system designers’ needs. However, 100 percent COTS are gen- erally inadequate for complex, com- mercialized measurement systems. Often these instruments, built into systems within a chassis or PC, are used to build systems that are utilized in a laboratory or R&D environment, with techniques or information that was not previously available. “We build flexibility into our
cards so they can deal with multiple conditions,” says Steve Krebs, of KineticSystems, a company that offers a wide selection of Compact PCI/PXI and VXI data acquisition (DAQ) mod- ules for test and measurement appli- cations. “For instance, we have multi- ple input ranges on our cards. But we can’t anticipate everything, particu- larly in cutting-edge applications, so that’s where customization still enters into the equation.” Although nearly 90 percent of
the company’s revenue comes from off-the-shelf module sales, Krebs notes that an increasing number of customers require some level of hard - ware, software or firmware modifica- tions to fit the application. “With modular instruments,
there is this idea that you can buy dif- ferent pieces from Vendor A, B and C and stick them together in a system and that’ll be it,” says Krebs. “But once you put these modules together in a chassis, there can be issues with interoperability, input ranges, syn- chronization, signal amplitude or con- ditioning, and other performance characteristics.”
Cards are flexible, but the manufacturer can’t
anticipate every possible instrumentation need.
Although some customization
can be handled by the customer’s engi- neering staff, modifications can be a time-consuming, expensive activity that consume resources and detract from a company’s core activity. As a result, it behooves manu-
facturers to partner with instrument providers willing to semi-customize COTS products. Unfortunately, the high volume manufacturers are often only interested in providing off-the- shelf products and are ill-equipped or unwilling to provide semi-customized products. According to Krebs, smaller in -
strument manufacturers such as KineticSystems are typically more willing — often free of charge or at nominal cost — to provide semi-cus- tom solutions along with its portfolio of off-the-shelf products.
PXI Testing Application KineticSystems recently com-
pleted work for an automotive compo- nent testing application. The system
System shown here includes instruments from KineticSystems
and highpspeed digitizers from GaGe, semi-customized to work as a complete system.
ff-the-shelf modular instru- ments (VME, PXI, VXI, Com - pactPCI, PCI, etc.) used to cre-
was for an automotive component- level development and testing divi- sion of a large company that supplies products to many different industries. The project involved an upgrade
of the company’s current data acqui- sition system for testing component- level assemblies for automobiles, in this case accelerator pedals. The customer required a COTS solution to replace existing instrumentation for lower cost and same performance as its existing system. The testing process involved temperature-controlled test cham-
Continued on page 68
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