New Industry Products

Cost-effective Data Acquisition with High-Resolution PCIe Cards

May 08, 2014 by Jeff Shepard

Elsys Instruments AG has expanded its family of LAN controlled transient recorders with a new, cost-effective series of high resolution PCIe data acquisition cards. The new TPCE-LE PCIe data acquisition waveform digitizing products deliver uncompromising, prime performance into a wider number of applications where the acquisition of high-speed, high-resolution and high-precision waveform data is of the utmost importance. Uses include power conversion, renewable power research and variable frequency drives as well as electrical traction, engine control, fluorescence and phosphorescence decay studies and particle accelerator control.

A number of applications benefit from this new line of lower cost products, such as education and research programs in schools, universities and laboratories as well as in application fields such as ballistics and explosive tests, acoustic emissions, ultrasonic testing and structural soundness testing.

The high-precision, high-resolution digitizers offer sophisticated features such as advanced trigger modes, continuous data acquisition mode, single ended and differential inputs, digital input lines and ICP coupling for powering piezo sensors. They enable the development of scalable systems that can be expanded to meet growing data acquisition needs. Free with each board purchase is the TranAX-LE operating and analysis software as well as LabVIEW Instrument driver, C++/C# and IVI scope class driver.

As with Elsys’ existing TPCX and TPCE platforms, the TPCE-LE modules can be housed in any existing TraNET system: TraNET FE transient recorders that hold four to 32 single-ended channels or two to 16 differential channels; TraNET EPC industrial computer frame with 16 slots for a total of 64 channels; TraNET PPC ruggedized portable computer system with six slots for a total of 24 channels;

All Elsys recorders feature input channels with the unique ability to be individually triggered. For example, four full trigger circuits are available on a four-channel recorder to obtain logic triggering such as “AND” and “OR”. Synchronization can be established with many associated channels, as well. Advanced trigger modes include slew rate, pulse width, pulse pause, period, missing event, window-in and window-out as well as the usual edge pos/neg triggering with trigger hysteresis values set by the user.

A sophisticated data acquisition mode, ideal for troubleshooting applications, available for the TPCE-LE platform is event controlled recording (ECR) mode. ECR requires a trigger event, but eliminates the dead time between triggers using an overlapping technique of adjacent acquisitions.

Technical Specifications: 4- or 8-channel single ended and differential cards; Sampling rate of up to 240 MS/s per channel; Up to 1 GB of memory (128 MS per channel); High precision: 0.03% of FSR (typical) 14-bit and 16-bit vertical resolution; and very low input noise.

Pricing for individual TPCE-LE modules starts at USD $3,400. Pricing for a LAN transient recorder system equipped with TPCE-LE modules is dependent upon recorder and number of channels selected. Delivery is four to six weeks ARO.