Downsize DAQ
Bakhtiar Choudhury
Product Specialist
Introducing United Electronics
Industries'
perfectly formed DAQ devices - designed to
squeeze a whole lot of functionality and
flexibility into the smallest possible footprint.
If size matters in your measurement and control
applications, then this article is need-to-know
information.
Science has always been obsessed
with making things smaller and
getting more for less. The microchip
changed the face of the electronics
industry in the 1960s and today
nanotechnology is pushing the boundaries
of what’s possible – a radio thousands of
times smaller than a human hair or a
nanocar as wide as a strand of DNA.
While it’s not quite ‘nano-sized’,
developers at United Electronics
Industries (UEI) have been working on
their own feat of miniaturisation to create
a compact data acquisition DAQ device
capable of logging multiple measurements
where space is limited, conditions are
extreme and budgets are tight.
The ‘cube’ is available in two
sizes:
4"x4"x4" holding three I/O boards or 4"x
4"x5.8" holding six boards. Then there’s
the RACKtangle chassis which takes up to
12 boards. Your Cube or Racktangle device
can be customised to suit almost any
application - handling hundreds of signals
of virtually any type - according to the I/O
boards you install. UEI recently introduced
interface support for ARINC-429 Bus, MILSTD-
1553 and RS-232/485 or any RS-232
device, making it particularly useful in
aerospace applications. And it’s a tough
cookie too – capable of maintaining highspeed
accuracy wherever it’s put through
its paces - on the back of a dirt bike, in
the cockpit of a Formula One racing car or
jet aircraft, or strapped to the main
turbine shaft in a hydro electric plant.
What’s more, engineers and scientists
get all of this at a price that can be
thousands of pounds cheaper than
competitive units helping project teams
keep design costs low.
There are five Cube deployment options
to encompass every possible DAQ
requirement:
1 POWERDNA - EthernetDAQ & Control
The PowerDNA Cube and RACKtangle
Ethernet-based data acquisition (DAQ)
chassis includes a CPU, real-time OS,
Ethernet interface and slots allowing the
installation of I/O boards.
2 UEILOGGER - High Performance Data Logger/recorders
The UEILogger provides
the ultimate in
flexible data recording capabilities. Each
Data Logger Cube contains the Logger
“engine” as well as the standard 3 or 6 I/O
slots. The UEILogger supports sample rates
up to 100 S/s on each I/O channel or port.
Data is logged onto standard SD Cards (2
Gig SD Card included) and may be retrieved
via the unit’s Ethernet port or directly from
the SD Card using a standard SD Card
reader. The 2 Gig SD Card included will hold
over 500 million 16-bit A/D readings.
3 UEIPAC - Programmable Automation Control
The UEIPAC unit solves many
measurement and control problems such
as temperature control, remote vehicle
control, Hardware in-the-loop (HIL) and
embedded DAQ applications. The UEIPAC
includes analogue input (with up to 24 bit
resolution), analogue output, digital I/O,
Serial and CAN communications, ARINC-
429 networking, counter/timer,
quadrature encoder input and more.
4 UEISIM - Simulink/RTW targets
The UEISIM offers Simulink users a new,
powerful and flexible I/O target. Models
built in Simulink are deployed directly on
the UEISIM using Real-Time Workshop.
The combination creates a powerful new
solution in the creation and tuning of
many real-time and non-real-time
applications. These include simulation
model verification, rapid prototyping, and
hardware-in-the-loop testing.
5 UEIMODBUS - Modbus TCP DAQ & Control
The UEIModbusTM cubes are Ethernetbased
data acquisition and control
interfaces that communicate with a host
computer or PLC over MODBUS TCP. The
UEIModbus is available with 3 or 6 I/O
slots. Choose from over 20 different I/O
boards to customise the cube to match
your application.
As you can see, there’s a configuration
sure to suit any kind of DAQ challenge –
why not lay your hands on a copy of UEI
product catalogue to get the full story? |
