Maintenance of EMC Test System – Hardware abstraction for multiple instruments and LabVIEW version upgrade

Client – Global Leader in Standards Compliance Testing

Challenge

Our client performs standards testing for many companies across many industries. The group we engaged with has expertise in electromagnetic compatibility compliance testing for automotive manufacturers.

The test system components were intermittently functional and one component was obsolete. Our client asked us to help upgrade the system proactively. They wanted to meet three goals during the upgrade:

1. Maintain same functionality of the test application and measurement equipment with new instrumentation.
2. Upgrade the system architecture to support new types and models of instrumentation, while keeping support for the original instruments.
3. Eliminate instrument errors in existing instruments drivers which were the cause of the intermittent operation.

Our client wanted our expertise to review options to achieve these goals, within   budget and equipment reuse constraints.

Solution

The test application had been written in LabVIEW 8, a version no longer supported by NI. The measurement instrumentation used GPIB to communicate with the test PC, a reliable yet aging communication bus. Upon discussion with our client, we mutually decided that LabVIEW should be updated and support for communications other than GPIB should be added, for a few reasons:

• NI had stopped supporting the version being used.
• Our client had purchased some newer, Ethernet-based instrumentation to replace the older equipment and that would need new drivers.
• Besides the new upgraded instrumentation, our client wanted to be able to support different, yet unknown devices in the future with possibly new communication protocols and connections.
• Some additional features and removal of existing operational kinks were requested to improve the user experience.

Based on these interests, the existing LabVIEW application was partially rewritten.

First, we added new drivers to support newer ethernet-based devices alongside the older GPIB equipment.

Second, we rearchitected the application to use modular, hardware abstracted device drivers.

Third, some rearchitecting and feature enhancements made the application more robust for users.

Benefits

Our client reported that removing the annoying kinks and enabling the new measurement equipment improved the user experience of the application significantly.

We also built the application into an executable so it could be deployed on multiple systems.  Prior to this upgrade, one test station ran the application in a development environment.

And, since multiple test stations were now in use, each with a potentially different set of measurement instruments, we reworked the application to scan the equipment connected to the PC so that the application would choose the appropriate driver automatically based on the device model ID detected during the scan. This automated configuration reduced the effort to configure and maintain the test systems.

Working Together

Our client was, of course, very familiar with the required measurement procedures, but had only a limited understanding of how to accomplish the goals of simplifying the user experience and making the measurement process robust. To feel more comfortable with each other, we discussed pros and cons of some options as well as their associated costs before agreeing to work together.

Part of the discussion dealt with working remotely. COVID-19 had only recently shut down the world, and yet we had to create a plan to deliver the updated application remotely.

How we helped

On some projects, Viewpoint has test equipment to deliver to the client, and on others the client has equipment that stays at their facility. Thus, for final installation and testing, we would normally visit our client’s facility.

But with COVID-19 infections growing in number, we jointly decided that having Viewpoint visit the facility in person was not worth the risk. Our client had all the necessary equipment at their facility, so we decided to manage the development, installation, and final testing as a team through video calls.

In the end, we were pleased that these final steps went smoothly; a lesson learned which increased  our confidence that remote projects could be completed successfully.

System Overview

Since our client has installed the application executable on multiple test systems with different configurations, the measurement equipment listed below is representative only.