Upgraded FPGAs boost acquisition modules: News from National Instruments

Note: A free brochure or catalogue is available from National Instruments on the products in this news release. Click here to request a copy.

National Instruments has released seven new R Series devices and five CompactRIO modules for embedded digital signal processing and high-speed control. Engineers and scientists can use these intelligent devices to create their own data acquisition and control circuitry through National Instruments LabView graphical development tools. For example, by using the new LabView Digital Filter Design Toolkit, LabView programmers can take advantage of automatically generated LabView FPGA code and easily design digital filters on the FPGA chips of their RIO devices.

The LabView code in the FPGAs of these devices can run at rates up to 40MHz, making these devices an ideal solution for ultra-high-speed analogue and discrete control.

'LabView FPGA and RIO technology is the heart of our data acquisition and control system, and the new denser 3-million-gate version of R Series devices provides for additional onboard processing and future expandability', said Michael Wiltberger, Principal Engineer at Optimedica Corp.

'By leveraging an off-the-shelf product, we are reducing our engineering and maintenance costs, and at the same time the FPGA offers greater safety and system reliability than a custom solution'.

The new NI R Series devices feature a denser 3-million-gate FPGA chip, 40MHz digital I/O (DIO) rates, 200kHz analogue input rates and 1MHz analogue output rates.

The new R Series plug-in devices include: the NI PXI/PCI-7833R, a 3M gate multifunction DAQ devices (eight AIs, eight AOs and 96 DIO channels); the NI PXI/PCI-7813R, a 3M gate digital only DAQ devices (160 DIO channels); the NI PXI/PCI-7830R, a 1M gate multifunction DAQ devices (four AIs, four AOs and 56 DIO channels); and the NI PCI-7811R, a 1M gate digital only DAQ device (160 DIO channels).

The five new NI CompactRIO modules expand the RIO embedded platform with up to 32 channels per module and increased digital performance with 100ns I/O rates.

With the new NI 9476 module, engineers can control 24V actuators with up to 8A of current drive per module.

Two of the new CompactRIO modules feature new D-sub connector options for the industrial NI 9221 and NI 9201 analogue input modules, offering low-cost cabling options for high-volume OEM applications.

The three additional new CompactRIO modules are: the NI 9401, an eight-channel, ultra-high-speed bidirectional TTL digital I/O module with 100ns I/O delay time; the NI 9476, a 32-channel, industrial digital output module with 500us I/O delay time; and the NI 9265.

a four-channel 16bit simultaneous current output module with 100Ksample/s.

'Since its inception, virtual instrumentation has given users the power to define their own data acquisition and control hardware using high-level software tools', said Tim Dehne, National Instruments Senior Vice President of R and D.

'These new RIO devices represent a powerful extension of virtual instrumentation; engineers and scientists now can create and customise their own data acquisition hardware using LabView FPGA technology'. Request a free brochure from National Instruments....

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