Entries for the 'DAQ Hardware' Category

It's great to be back in Austin Texas for the annual National Instruments NIweek conference. Today is the first official day of the conference, where the largest ever audience (3300 people!) will be introduced to the latest products, trends, markets, and emerging technologies. We kicked things off at Alliance Day yesterday, where the day's keynote and sessions are dedicated to NI's partner netwo... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC will join leading companies to host the National Instruments Technical Symposium that builds on the success of NIWeek, the worldwide virtual instrumentation conference and exhibition held annually in Austin, Texas, where the company is headquartered. NIWeek 2010 concluded in August with attendance of more than 2,500 people, who participated in hands-on training, interactive technical sessions,... [Read the rest of this blog...]

Testing your BMS is a necessity. Determining a strategy to complete that testing is not so easy.  It is tempting to over focus on hardware cost minimization, which must be weighed against the cost of ineffective or incomplete testing.  Here we explore three different strategies for balancing hardware cost with performance.

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Upon first seeing the automated Battery Management System Test Stand DMC recently developed, people tended to ask the same question: "Why is it so tall?" .  Here are three good answers for why DMC deliberately choose that structure to benefit the customer in the long term.

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Recently DMC put together another BMS Validation Test Stand for testing the BMS inside a PHEV battery pack.  Before we shipped it, we wanted to demonstrate the basic capabilities of the battery cell simulators, software, and other electronics. 

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So I've been using National Instruments hardware now for 15 years and programming in LabVIEW for 10.  First, that makes me feel pretty old.  Second, why is it that this is the first year I have gone to NI week?  I don't know.  But I finally understand why everyone else makes such a big deal about attending. It is a great time.  You get to network with a bunch of grea... [Read the rest of this blog...]

DMC is hitting the ground running at NIWeek 2010.  "It's Time".  This is the theme of the keynote of the first official day of NIWeek.  Time to develop, real-time control, timing for data synchronization, time to market,  everything that involves time, and how NI products can help. This is the first official day of the conference, but the second for DMC, as again this... [Read the rest of this blog...]

This is part one of my blog series detailing the use and optimization of the TDMS format. Here is a table of contents for all blogs in this series: LabVIEW Data Storage: Overview of TDMS LabVIEW Data Storage: TDMS Performance Tweaking LabVIEW Data Storage: TDMS Usage Case Study   Here at DMC, almost all of our LabVIEW applications acquire data at one point or another. This data... [Read the rest of this blog...]

At DMC, we're happy to be working hard at the cutting edge of emerging Energy Storage devices.  Many of the systems we've recently architected and delivered are world-class manufacturing test systems for Batteries and Smart Battery Packs. Another aspect of our work is further upstream, in the realm of Research and Development.  Two new case studies cite specific and extensive work that ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

In RT-101: Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS), I provided readers with a brief description of the many benefits that systems running an RTOS can provide in harsh and demanding environments.  The bigger question is: in an industry saturated by PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), PACs (Programmable Automation Controllers), Field Point controllers, Microcontrollers and many others, why should... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 Eric Nielsen’s Real Time blog did a good job of hitting the major strengths and benefits of any system based on a controller running a Real-time operating system.  Here I’ll get into a little more depth, specifically for the capabilities these systems give in regards to distributed execution.

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Although we use many different technologies and software packages at DMC, we have a great amount of experience with National Instruments LabVIEW. We currently have four Certified Architects and another seven Certified Developers. Lately, we've had several customers with applications that require distributed systems using cRIOs and RT PXI chassis. Both for development and for later interaction, we... [Read the rest of this blog...]

An article co-authored by DMC Senior Project Engineer, Brent Hoerman, has been featured on the Evaluation Engineering website and will be published in the April print edition.  Brent wrote the article after completing a project with Pickering Interfaces, in which they developed a new PXI Battery Simulator Module.  Co-writing the article are David Owens and Bob Stasonis of Pickering. The... [Read the rest of this blog...]

One of LabVIEW’s strongest points is that it is a very “approachable” programming languages.  Since it is a graphical language, it is relatively easy for a “non-programmer” to get a quick, simple, stand-alone program up and running. A lot of times, especially if you are just trying to get a quick data sample from something, this is all an engineer or technician might need. However, ther... [Read the rest of this blog...]

If you don't have in-house personnel proficient in LabVIEW development, how do you know if your integrator is proficient?  You could take our word for it, but why not go to an unbiased source.

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DMC has been involved in quite a few battery testing projects lately.  We thought it would be helpful to assemble a compilation of some of the general things we have learned into a new white paper.... "Electric Vehicle Battery Pack Testing in a Manufacturing Environment" If you are interested in the automotive battery packs used in electric vehicles (EVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), a... [Read the rest of this blog...]

We have added a few new Case Studies that showcase two of the business areas in which we recently have had a number of projects: Sharepoint Development and Battery Testing.

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The Devcon command line utility is a versatile and powerful way to execute system level operations on any device connected to a computer.  It proved particularly useful for implementing a rescue strategy for unresponsive USB devices in a long term testing application.

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For a recent DMC project I had the pleasure of working with Pickering Interfaces, a well-known international PXI hardware vendor, to supply an off-the-shelf PXI card which can simulate 6 chemical battery cells.  Since such a product did not exist at the start of the project, DMC had a large role to play in specifying its eventual performance and features. It's not every day you get to dream ... [Read the rest of this blog...]

 DMC exhibited at the 2009 National Instruments Technical Symposium.  It was a great learning experience and networking opportunity.  

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