Analog Outputs with Isolated Grounds
Simultaneous Updates: No Phase Errors
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Bellevue, WA, June 26, 2007 * -- You now can eliminate two serious potential problems – ground currents and phase errors – from analog outputs in your applications. Microstar Laboratories, Inc., maker of Data Acquisition Processor (DAP) boards, today announced a new board to complement its growing family of analog and digital signal-conditioning expansion boards that make it easy to implement signal conditioning in data acquisition systems. The new board – part number MSXB 076 – includes eight single-ended analog outputs, with an isolated ground for each output. Eight boards in a 19-inch rack-mountable industrial enclosure can connect to a single DAP board. And multiple DAP boards can work together in a PC and across a network as a synchronized system. MSXB 076 boards, as output boards, do not themselves include signal conditioning. They do, however, share significant aspects of the new engineering design implemented in the input boards in the signal-conditioning family that they complement. Specifically, they offer high signal density, they enable high channel counts, they include an isolated ground for each channel, and they allow for simultaneous updates across all channels.
Channel Architecture
MSXB 076 boards slot into a backplane in a standard industrial enclosure like other signal-conditioning products that conform to the external hardware specifications of the Microstar Laboratories channel architecture: signal connectors on 3U (100mm high) Eurocard B (220mm deep) boards – Eurocards – that often pre-process a signal. A backplane connector on each board connects it to a digital backplane factory-fitted into the industrial enclosure. An interface board that also plugs into the backplane receives digitized waveforms from a DAP board in a PC.
Synchronized Systems
Every DAP board includes an onboard processor running a real-time operating system that Windows applications that support DLL calls can communicate with – and control. You can communicate with and control a DAP board from DAPstudio – a Windows application from Microstar Laboratories – as well as from third-party (or your own) software. DAP boards also communicate among themselves independently of Windows to synchronize their clocks with one another. They then all work synchronously as a networked data acquisition system. So, even if your application has hundreds – or maybe thousands – of analog outputs on MSXB 076 boards distributed over a network, all these output channels update simultaneously, as a single synchronized system. And none of these channels introduce noise from ground currents.
Conclusion and Next Step
When each signal should have an isolated ground, when eliminating phase differences matters, when compact packaging helps, and when your application has – or could have – many channels, take a look at the synchronized PC-based data acquisition and control systems produced by Microstar Laboratories. New analog output expansion boards announced by the company let you build systems with multiple channels of isolated analog output expansion on MSXB 076 boards in 19-inch rack-mountable industrial enclosures connected to synchronized DAP boards controlled by PC software. And these systems are scalable across a network. The company will supply evaluation hardware and software at no charge. You can download a full version of the latest DAPstudio software to evaluate it. You do not need DAP hardware to try out some of the features of DAPstudio. To try out all of its features, you will need demo hardware. Call Microstar Laboratories for this. The MSXB 076 board is available now.
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Editorial Overview:
You now can design out two serious potential problems – ground currents and phase errors – from the analog outputs in your application. A new analog output board offers high density, enables high channel counts, includes an isolated ground for each channel, and allows simultaneous updates across all channels. Microstar Laboratories, Inc., maker of Data Acquisition Processor (DAP) boards, today announced the MSXB 076 board that includes eight analog outputs, with an isolated ground for every output. Eight boards in a 19-inch rack-mountable industrial enclosure can connect to a single DAP board. Multiple DAP boards can work together in a PC and across a network as a synchronized system with several hundred channels of isolated analog output, all of it in phase. The new board is available now, and the company provides hardware at no charge for evaluation.
Note to the Editor:
Microstar Laboratories suggests this text as a caption for the available image:
Specifying the MSXB 076 Analog Output Expansion Board shown here protects your application from two serious potential problems: ground currents and phase errors.
Microstar Laboratories, Inc. claims Microstar Laboratories, Data Acquisition Processor, DAP, and DAPstudio as trademarks. Microsoft has registered Windows as a trademark. Other organizations may claim – or may have registered – as trademarks any trade names, logos, and service marks that appear in this document but not in the list above.
Microstar Laboratories makes it a practice to use an appropriate symbol at the first occurrence of a trademark or registered trademark name in a document, or to include trademark statements like this with the document.
* corrections were made to the text on June 27, 2007
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