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What's the role of software in T&M?

Tom@Bbite

T&M kit is hardware. Originally stand alone, then connected, now modular or PC plug in. Will it ever get to being a virtual instrument on a PC? I sthat what you want? Is modular better than rack & stack? Is the software needed your own so it is fully customisable, a alnaguage or bought pre-configured test sets? Where is it all taking us and where do we want it to go?

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    Software also separates the hardware from the display functionality

     

    outside of simulation there is always a need for some of the instrument to be physical, ie the probes and perhaps an ADC for each point requiring measurement, multiplexing could be used to increase the probe points but its a balance between bandwidth and monitor points. If you look the the new MDO / MSO oscilloscopes from Agilent and Tektronix you will see that most of the hardware is allbout capturing the inputs as fast as possible and then simply passing them to software for processing. if there was a fast enough channel to a PC fr example then all that functionality and more could be remote from the actual capture device.

     

    So i doubt you will ever get away from at least the capture devices but what you do with that data can become virtual (IE Frequency Analyser, Oscilloscope, Multimeter, Frequency Counter, logic analyser, protocol Analyser all have the need for the basic high speed capture device but the actual display and math and time corolation can be done in software and easily mixed and matched

     

    The issue I have found so far is that the software from specific manufactures do not allow integration with other vendor equipment and so this limits you from picking best in class from varied vendors or you have to resort to expensive third party software like matlab.

     

    this is one of the reasons I have started to write my own software, a good educational experience and hopefully a useful tool at the end of it

     

    Peter

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  • 0

    Software also separates the hardware from the display functionality

     

    outside of simulation there is always a need for some of the instrument to be physical, ie the probes and perhaps an ADC for each point requiring measurement, multiplexing could be used to increase the probe points but its a balance between bandwidth and monitor points. If you look the the new MDO / MSO oscilloscopes from Agilent and Tektronix you will see that most of the hardware is allbout capturing the inputs as fast as possible and then simply passing them to software for processing. if there was a fast enough channel to a PC fr example then all that functionality and more could be remote from the actual capture device.

     

    So i doubt you will ever get away from at least the capture devices but what you do with that data can become virtual (IE Frequency Analyser, Oscilloscope, Multimeter, Frequency Counter, logic analyser, protocol Analyser all have the need for the basic high speed capture device but the actual display and math and time corolation can be done in software and easily mixed and matched

     

    The issue I have found so far is that the software from specific manufactures do not allow integration with other vendor equipment and so this limits you from picking best in class from varied vendors or you have to resort to expensive third party software like matlab.

     

    this is one of the reasons I have started to write my own software, a good educational experience and hopefully a useful tool at the end of it

     

    Peter

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