Realtime testing and simulation software

Test & Measurement

30 September 2009 Test & Measurement

National Instruments has released NI VeriStand 2009, an open, configuration-based software environment for creating realtime testing applications such as hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and controlled environmental tests. All of the common functionalities of a realtime test system are implemented and optimised inside VeriStand in a ready-to-use format. The platform helps developers configure a multicore-ready, realtime engine capable of supporting third-party I/O interfaces including a variety of data acquisition and field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based I/O interfaces, as well as triggerable data-logging and stimulus generation tasks.

Customers’ control algorithms and simulation models often required by realtime testing applications can also be imported into VeriStand from NI LabVIEW software and many other third-party modelling environments, including The MathWorks’ Simulink and ITI’s SimulationX software environments, because VeriStand is an open environment for realtime test system development. Additionally, VeriStand provides a configurable run-time interface that includes a variety of tools to interact with realtime testing applications. The user interface is a run-time-editable workspace, so engineers can create and modify their user interfaces without interrupting realtime test system execution.

VeriStand provides the ability to quickly capture the essential hardware I/O, simulation model and other realtime task settings using an interactive system explorer window. These settings are saved in a system definition that is deployed to a realtime execution target such as a PXI system. Engineers can then add user interface controls and indicators and map them to the system definition resources to interact with their realtime test systems. They can also use stimulus profile editors to create stimulus and logging configurations that are deployed to the realtime execution target for deterministic execution.

While no programming knowledge is required to use VeriStand, the software is designed to be customised and extended using the LabVIEW, LabVIEW FPGA Module, NI TestStand, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and Python environments.

For more information contact National Instruments, 0800 203 199, [email protected], www.ni.com/southafrica

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