Software/hardware-tool kit reduces test-development time by 99%
By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, September 18, 2003
It's easy to become enamored of “charismatic” technologies—say, rewriteable DVDs that store 9.4 Gbytes—and overlook bread-and-butter inventions that can change your working life. Agilent's latest product, Test Automation Kit, might have a boring name, but it can change the working lives of many engineers (Picture).
Agilent has demonstrated that its $1995 kit, which includes both software and hardware, reduces to approximately an hour the time it takes to perform a group of necessary but tedious and unglamorous tasks that currently consume an average of 100 hours. The tasks relate to setting up and configuring test instruments and ensuring that they accurately measure the correct quantities. The kit’s value doesn’t lie primarily in production testing, says Agilent; the product’s main use is in design labs in setups whose main purpose is characterizing and verifying the performance of products under development.
The kit automatically loads software drivers and configures and verifies approximately two dozen of the manufacturer’s most popular instruments. It supports voltmeters, function generators, counters, power supplies, signal-switching units, and oscilloscopes. The kit’s components include a USB-to-IEEE 488 converter, the manufacturer’s Test Express software, a test module and wiring harness, 200 program examples, and two hours of telephone consultation that you can schedule with a systems expert. The kit also includes facilities for users to extend the list of supported instruments to other Agilent products and to products of Agilent’s competitors.
Although many customers own working ensembles of instruments to which they can add the kit and immediately begin reaping its time savings, Agilent also offers two instrument ensembles that include the Test Automation Kit. The economy ensemble, which costs less than $10,000, includes a multimeter, a relay multiplexer, a function/arbitrary-waveform generator, a frequency counter, a power supply, and cables. The high-capacity ensemble, which costs less than $20,000, adds more signal-switching capability, an IEEE 488 interface module, an oscilloscope, and an equipment rack.
Agilent Technologies, 1-800-452-4844, www.agilent.com.
