Hardware Competencies

CanyonSleeper has the know how to work with a variety of hardware.  This web page serves both as a showcase of the abilities of CanyonSleeper and as a reminder for ourselves of what we've done (and learned) in the past.  We acknowledge and are greatful for the numerous engineers in the community and their willingness to share that has enabled the learning of this information. The hardware expertise is grouped by the type of hardware.  If you have a question about a hardware listed here, we may be able to help!

Overview

Device Communication

This section lists the different communication methods to talk to devices; typically the unit under test.  Most of these methods are a form of serial communication.  A hyperlink will be available in the list below if more extensive information is available.

CAN

NI provides multiple CAN devices.  These run on Windows, RealTime OS (RT), and FPGA.  The Windows and RT NI interfaces have an sophisticated API with many options.  The NI FPGA API is low level and works great.  CanyonSleeper has compentencies working with the FPGA API, which is simple, fast, and very effictive and ensuring no FPGA messages are lost, messages are sent when requested, and any errors are detected. The NI-cRIO-9853 is a great module for high speed 1Mbps communication.

1394 (Firewire) Communication

1394 is a serial communication used in many aircraft.  Canyonsleeper has experience with the Excalibur 1394 card.  It's capable of receiving buffered 1394 message with hardware timing on the PCI card to ensure that no messages are lost.  It handles 1394 timing and is a good card to test 1394 aircraft components.

1553 Communication

1553 communication is used on may aircraft as a communication bus.  Canyonsleeper has experience with the Altadt PC card.  This care not only can receive buffered messages, but has provision for transmitting messages that can be updated from a buffer.  See the whitepaper for more information.

Custom Digital Communication

FPGA includes IP for SPI and I2C.  Many other IP may be downloaded and used as needed for particular applications.  The NI High-Speed cRIO-9401 module may be used to write custom digital communication.  Canyonsleeper has used FPGA and RT code to communicate with devices using Manchester encoding on a high speed bus.

Telemetry Receivers

Devices that transmit data wirelessly must be tested as well.  Canyonsleeper has expertise using SEMCO's Telemetry Receiver.  The SEMCO Receiver has hardware level timing and buffered communication with the Test PC to ensure no data is lost.

Classic Serial

Ok, so serial communication has been around forever and is well understood.  Serial is on this list so the common issues will be remembered on projects. Many USB-Serial devices use the FTDI chip that may need a Windows driver to be installed to work.  Some USB cables don't supply enough current to power the FTDI chips and device communication fails because of the cable.  Windows will often change the COM Port setting for USB-Serial converters which can cause problems for software.  LabVIEW can hang indefinitely on a VISA read or VISA write until the USB-Serial converter is unplugged from the computer.  For all these reasons, NI-Serial devices are recommended over USB-Serial converters.

GPIB

GPIB has been around forever.  USB Devices from Prologix are less expensive than the NI GPIB devices, but they suffer from many of the same problems as the USB to Serial converters.  Special commands to the Prologix device are sent using the same VISA Read and Write commands as sending GPIB data to the device, so writing arbirtrary data on the GPIB bus is non-trivial.  Canyonsleeper has has seen better success with the Prologix Ethernet to GPIB converters than the USB to GPIB converters.

Data Acquisition

The devices in this section are used to acquire data.  Most of the data acquisition done at CanyonSleeper uses NI products, but this section captures some of the outliers we've worked with.

NI-DAQ

Canyonsleeper has years of experiences working with both DAQmx and legacy NI-DAQ.  Converting the Legacy NI-DAQ to DAQmx is fairly straight forward, but there can be corner cases in triggering and pulse counting that require special care to make sure the DAQmx code functions the same.  Special care should be taken when ordering an NI-DAQ device if analog triggering is needed since many NI-DAQ devices do not have this support.  Although NI-DAQ offers sophisticated signal routing and timing options, most synchronized acquition or low level timing is much easier in NI-cRIO.

NI-cRIO

Canyonsleeper preferes NI-cRIO as the acquisition/control system in many applications because it:

• may run high-speed FPGA code.

• offers a wide range of signal conditioning modules to interface with any sensor or actuator.

• allows custom timing and synchronization option among modules through straightforward FPGA programming.

•  with a wide variety of signal conditioning modules, a flexible way to  versatile straight-forward programming.

• is very reliable and robust.

Much more could be added about specific modules and architectures useful with cRIO programming.  This information is maintained internally at Canyonsleeper but may show up in another web page in the future.

IPC DAS 7000

The IPC DAS 7000 data acquisition system allows different acquisition devices to plug into a RS-485 network to pass data to a PC.  This system has been around for many years. 

Analog Discovery 2

The Analog Discovery is a USB-DAQ device that functions as both a scope and analyzer.

Control Systems

Delta RMC System

The Delta RMC System is a deterministic controller that is specialized for motion and force control.