LXI Newsletter
News	New LXI Products	Join Newsletter	Lead Article

From Bob Helsel,
Editor, LXI Newsletter

Welcome to the August issue of the LXI Newsletter in China.

Our intention is to share information with you on the LXI Standard and its many applications in the Test and Measurement marketplace. We also want to introduce you to the LXI Consortium, which has the mission of developing, maintaining and promoting the LXI Standard worldwide.

The LXI Consortium held its first meeting at the end of 2004 with a dozen T&M companies. It released Revision 1 of the LXI Specifications one year later and companies immediately started building LXI conformant instruments. LXI has become the fastest growing T&M standard since its inception, and we now have over 50 members worldwide. There are more than 2810 certified LXI products from 41 vendors in over 297 different product families.

For more information, go to www.lxistandard.org.

The Importance of LXI Compliance
in Test Instrumentation

By Herman vanEijkelenburg, Director of Marketing
Pacific Power Source

For Pacific Power Source, a long time supplier of precision programmable AC power sources for use in both development and test applications, the use of industry standards has always been a key requirement when it comes to new product development. This is especially true now as customers shy away from proprietary products and protocols, out of fear of being locking to a sole vendor. Such was the case at the inception of a new technology platform that will be the bases for a wide range of high-end, all digitally controlled, programmable AC and DC power sources that started at Pacific Power few years ago.

The first product incarnation of this new architecture platform is the just launched AFX Series of 9kVA to 60kVA power sources. Using industry standards and protocols makes it much easier for our customers to integrate new platforms and products into both existing legacy systems as well as newly designed systems. Increasing budget constraints are driving the need to keep existing test systems going for an increasing period of time, often far beyond the original life-cycle plan. Being able to easily upgrade available power to meet ever increasing power demands is often a key hurdle to overcome.

The LXI Reference Design on Different Microcontrollers

Submitted by TSE Plazotta

In March 2016, the LXI Consortium released the LXI Reference Design, Version 1.0. With the help of the Reference Design, which is available as source code, it has become easier for members of the LXI Consortium to adopt this standard in their devices. Also, instrument vendors that have not supported the LXI standard yet, have a much better option for saving time and cost using the LXI Reference Design.

The LXI Reference Design was mainly developed for the Windows and Linux operating systems. On Windows, the Intel x86 and x64 architectures are supported. On Linux, the range of CPUs is wider. Here not only the Intel x86 and x64 architectures are supported, but also the ARM processors. One of the development platforms of the LXI Reference Design was an Ubuntu Linux on a Cubieboard with an ARM processor.

Modifying a GPIB System to Include LAN/LXI:
A step-by-step example

Submitted by Keysight Technologies
Introduction

In most cases, the process of replacing a GPIB instrument with a similar LXI-based device will be relatively quick and easy. This is a major strength of LXI, which has been designed to simplify instrument set up and coniguration. A LAN interface is a standard part of practically every PC. That interface can provide signiicant speed improvements, and can be simple to use. With LXI, it is possible to use virtually any LAN-equipped PC, connect it to an LXI instrument, bring up the instrument Web page, conigure the instrument, and start using it in just a few minutes.

The Target Test System and Instrument Selection

We’ll use a typical system that is 6-10 years old. This is a test system used to test an electronic control module. The DUT (Device Under Test) must be powered and requires a number of DC and AC stimulus signals and loads to emulate its operation in the inal environment. It is beyond the scope of this note to venture further into this application, since the goal is to replace one instrument in an existing test system. Here is the coniguration of the test system:

Thanks to all our readers.
Bob Helsel, Editor
www.lxistandard.org

Use the connection you already know!

New LXI Products

The LXI Consortium has certified more than 2810 instruments in over 297 product families since the specifications were first released in September 2005. Some of the recent LXI product introductions are highlighted below:

Pickering LXI Modular Matrix Chassis
65-200-001
The modular matrix chassis offers you a solution that can be easily re-configured by the insertion and removal of sub-cards.

R&S®RTO oscilloscopes
R&S®RTO oscilloscopes combine excellent signal fidelity, up to 16 bit resolution and high acquisition rates with a compact device format in the 600 MHz to 4 GHz class.

Pacific Power Source AFX Series programmable AC, DC & AC+DC
AFX models are available in power levels ranging from 9kVA to 60kVA. All models are based on a proprietary, all-digital, power conversion technology platform that supports a set of formerly unavailable features and capabilities used in programmable power sources.

Tektronix MDO4000C Mixed Domain Oscilloscope
6–in–1 Versatility PLUS High Performance in One Powerful Oscilloscope
The new MDO4000C includes up to six built-in instruments, each with exceptional performance to address tough challenges.

Keithley 2281S-20-6 Precision DC Supply and Battery Simulator, 20V, 6A
The Series 2281S Battery Simulator and Precision DC Power Supply innovatively integrates battery simulation with the functions of a high-precision power supply and battery testing.

Keysight N8937APV Photovoltaic Array Simulator, 1500 VDC, 208 VAC
The Keysight N8937APV Photovoltaic (PV) Array Simulator enables you to develop, verify and optimize the performance of your inverter maximum power point tracking algorithms.

VTI Instruments RX0124
The RX0124 is part of VTI's RX series family of rugged instruments with built in sensor signal conditioning. The RX0124 is designed to address all strain/bridge measurement requirements for use in a harsh test cell environment.

IVI Web Forum
Question and Answer:
Usage of the IVI VISA DLL

Answered by Kirk Fertitta, Pacific Mindworks
for the IVI Web Forum

Note: Offering an IVI driver is a requirement for all LXI-conformant instruments. The IVI Web Forum is hosted by the IVI Foundation. You can sign up at www.ivifoundation.org.

Usage of the IVI VISA DLL:

We downloaded your IVI Shared Components VISA.Net and come up with several questions:

1. Is the Ivi.Visa.dll free for development, which means we develop an C# application based on this library to communicate with special instruments?

2. Can we distribute our application with the library to others?

3. Base on the second question: Are we allowed to use it for commercial purposes (the dll is shipped for free but our software won’t be free)

4. We already started succesfully to communicate with our instrument just by referencing ivi.visa.dll. Is this the correct way to use the library without special vendor (NI, Agilent, ..) VISA implementations. Are there any Problems?

LXI Links

New Guides for Using LXI

LXI Discovery Tool

LXI Consortium Releases
the LXI Reference Design

LXI Channel on YouTube

Join our LXI LinkedIn group