National Instruments (NI) and third-party organizations have introduced a range of plug-in modules for embedded, automation and measurement applications.
More than 50 plug-in modules, 50 third-party plug-in modules and a variety of chassis are available to meet the need of customized applications.
Users can integrate the C Series plug-in modules into a variety of C Series chassis such as the NI R Series expansion chassis, NI CompactRIO chassis and NI CompactDAQ chassis to produce a number of mixed measurement devices. Moreover, the third-party plug-in modules can be used in a variety of field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based chassis such as the R Series expansion chassis and the NI CompactRIO chassis.
National Instruments’ Vice President of industrial and embedded product line, John Hanks, informed that production of the 100 C Series modules was a significant milestone and denotes the popularity of the C Series platform. He added that unlike conventional methods, customers can design advanced systems in a short period of time.
The NI CompactRIO chassis incorporates a reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture that features an integrated I/O connectivity, a FPGA and a real-time processor. This architecture enables scientists and engineers to produce sophisticated embedded and control systems on CompactRIO hardware and deploy the same on NI Single-Board RIO hardware or CompactRIO integrated devices to minimize the production costs. The C Series plug-in modules can also be used with the NI 9144 EtherCAT slave chassis to deliver high-performance distributed input and output over EtherCAT.
By using the NI cRIO-9951 Module Development Kit (MDK), resellers and integrators can produce customized C Series plug-in modules for add-on boards and CompactRIO chassis for NI Single-Board RIO.
Plug-and-play simplicity of Universal Serial Bus (USB) for electrical measurements and sensor can be achieved with the NI CompactDAQ USB chassis, both in the field and the manufacturing platform. By integrating NI signal streaming technology with NI C Series plug-in modules, the NI CompactDAQ chassis provides high-speed data in mixed-measurement devices. The NI CompactDAQ chassis can manage about eight NI C Series plug-in modules and can be fixed to any computer device that runs on Windows operating system.
Customers can utilize the C Series plug-in modules with NI LabVIEW, a graphical programming software that utilizes wires and icons to design advanced control, test and measurement devices.
The NI LabVIEW software can be integrated with a variety of hardware systems and offers numerous built-in libraries for advanced data visualization and analysis. The software can be used across multiple operating systems.
National Instruments provides cost-effective, off-the-shelf software and hardware systems and distributes them to a number of industries. National Instruments has been named as one of the 100 best companies by FORTUNE magazine for more than a decade. The company’s headquarters is based in Austin, Texas, USA and has a network of operations across the globe.