Dytran Instruments, Inc. a leading manufacturer of piezoelectric and DC MEMS accelerometers, force and pressure transducers and associated electronics, has developed the VibraScout™ Vibration Measurement System, which includes a USB digital triaxial accelerometer combining a MEMS accelerometer with a microcontroller to create an intelligent sensor.
The VibraScout™ Vibration Measurement System consists of a USB triaxial DC response accelerometer, 15-foot 4-pin to USB cable assembly, VibraScout™ Data Acquisition Software, and VibraScout™ Windows compatible Post rocessor software on CD (no license required). In addition to the vibration measurement system, the only required hardware is a personal computer and a USB port.
The triaxial accelerometer features power from a PC bus, and as a result no additional external power supply is required. The software package supplied with each system allows for real time, three directional acceleration acquisition (including Static Inclination) along with real-time temperature monitoring. The standard USB protocol handles all the sensor communications with the PC and provides the following information: storage of acceleration and temperature information; real-time scrolling plots of acceleration data with display of min, max and mean; real-time logging of data to delimited file for importing into Excel; both auto and smart triggering modes; digital filters to improve signal/noise ratio; real-time data compression to Fast Fourier Transform (FFT); and many more.
Offered with a 16g range, the variable capacitance (VC) accelerometer combines an integrated VC chip in a hermetically sealed titanium housing weighing 17 grams, and is offered with a low-end frequency response down to DC (0 Hz) and an upper frequency range of 1,100 Hz. Units are rugged to 10,000g shock and operate from +3.8 to +6.0 VDC power.
The VibraScout™ Post Processor software is designed to provide a user with the tools to apply non-linear interpolation to resample raw data that is recorded with VibraScout™ software at higher frequencies to improve signal resolution. Data is valid only up to 1.1 kHz after applying the post processing. This mathematical interpolation is performed using the Whittaker-Shannon interpolation technique to reproduce the recorded real signals with proper amplitude.
Features of the VibraScout™ Post Processor software include: plot recorded data from the software; zoom and select a specific timeframe of recorded data for post processing; reproduce interpolated oversampled data to provide better resolution of vibration signals; multiple file types to export to including ASCII, time history .JPG files, TDMS binary files of time history data readable in Microsoft Excel, PSD and FFT plots in Joint Photographic file format; and display of recorded average temperature.
The VibraScout™ USB Vibration Measurement System was designed for a variety of low-to-medium frequency vibration applications where portability is critical including quick, easy in-field data collection; Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH); static angular measurements; ride quality; vibration measurement and diagnosis of rotating machinery; and simplified field data testing.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is available for customers who would like to build custom applications for the VibraScout™. The API provides support for any .NET-compatible client application. Custom application development is also available. Please contact Dytran directly for further information.