Posted to News on 31st Aug 2009, 00:00
PCI cards convert desktop PCs into oscilloscopes
National Instruments is introducing PCI versions of two popular high-speed and high-density digitisers/oscilloscopes, extending the company's high-speed PCI offering to 2GS/s and its low-cost PCI offering to £330 (EUR475) per channel.
The National Instruments PCI-5152 general-purpose digitiser converts a desktop PC into a full-featured oscilloscope. It offers a 2GS/s real-time sampling rate on one channel or a 1GS/s real-time sampling rate on two simultaneous channels. For repetitive signals, the module features an equivalent-time sampling (ETS) mode to sample at up to 20GS/s. The board features 300MHz bandwidth and ranges from 100mV to 10V with 50ohm and 1Mohm software-selectable input impedance.
Engineers can customise the NI PCI-5152 digitiser through software to perform user-defined measurements in application areas including semiconductor chip characterisation, ultrasonic non-destructive test (NDT), optical coherence tomography (OCT) and mass spectroscopy.
Starting at just £330 per channel, the National Instruments PCI-5015 eight-channel, 60MS/s, 12-bit data acquisition board increases system channel density while lowering test costs. With picosecond-level synchronisation accuracy among multiple modules, the device is excellent for building high-channel-count systems in application areas such as linear and phased-array ultrasonic NDT.
