Guest post by Jeff Philips, Head of Automotive Marketing at National Instruments
You’re ready to take advantage of the benefits of Hardware in the Loop testing. But, before you begin, there are some common roadblocks you are likely to experience when setting up a new HIL system. You can avoid these by first assessing your preparedness for this transition whether it’s a desktop system or a full testing rack.
I have been managing my son’s baseball teams since he was 3 years old. He is 17 now, and this will be our last season together. When I see him on the field, I feel so much pride in knowing what a great kid he was; teenager he is; and man he will someday be.
As coaches, we have always recognized the tremendous responsibilities that are inherent to coaching a team sport. The things we have emphasized over the years have helped shape who they are and will become.
The system, presented at NI Week 2018 by Cummins Inc. and Wineman Tech in a keynote session, was featured in a show recap article by Electronic Design.
NI, Cummins and WTI on stage at NIWeek 2018.
Cummins Inc. needed a repeatable platform to test more than 60 engines, ranging from near zero emissions to diesel to natural gas. The company had already tried several hardware-in the-loop strategies to test a variety of MCUs in its flagship electric vehicle, the AEOS Truck, but needed a higher level of integration and flexibility to reduce test time, space and cost on a global scale.
In the last blog post, we covered why and how to create UI Messages. Now that we have a way to use TestStand to run a VI In the LabVIEW operator interface and even set a variable back in TestStand, we can start thinking about ways to use that technology to get our test data back from TestStand.
National Instruments TestStand is software for running test sequences that automates many of the functions that are common to a piece of test software, like user permission management, UUT data input, report generation, and database logging. However, in some cases the built-in TestStand functionality is either not specific enough or not required.
Python made a rather large splash at NIWeek 2018. It got a number of mentions in various settings, the most notable of which was Collin Draughon's talk "Automating Measurements with Python." LabVIEW 2018's Python Node makes it very straight-forward to call a simple Python script from within LabVIEW. You set up the Python environment, invoke the Python Node, and then tear down the environment when you're done.
Wineman Technology Recognized by National Instruments Americas Sales Leadership for Outstanding Performance, Commitment, and Technical Excellence
Summary: Test engineers typically add manual-control screens to LabVIEW applications. While it would be helpful to repetitively execute varying parts of those manual-control screens, LabVIEW is not optimal for dynamic scripting, or on-the-fly sequencing with flow control. (Imagine editing the source code of Excel each time you wanted to create a macro.) And while Python is built for scripting, it requires advanced custom coding to interface with LabVIEW.
The First Robotics season is over for 2018, but it’s not too late to write my annual blog about what I learned from building a robot over the span of a couple of months with a bunch of high school students.
According to FMI’s Automotive Electronic Control Unit (ECU) Market Assessment, the global market for ECUs – including engine, brake, suspension, and body control modules – is forecasted to grow at a strong CAGR of 7.1% through the period of 2017-2022. The race to creating smarter, safer, and cleaner cars for the mass market is tighter than ever, and with that comes the pressure to speed up the R&D cycle while still providing comprehensive, bulletproof testing that roots out potential problem areas.
