National Instruments has announced a new wireless gateway and two new measurement nodes that extend the capabilities of the NI wireless sensor network (WSN) platform and illustrate the company’s commitment to wireless measurement technology. With NI LabVIEW system design software, engineers can easily integrate wired and wireless measurement and control systems and deploy autonomous programs to WSN nodes that perform local control, data analysis and event-based alarming or notification.

News Highlights:

• Plug directly into any CompactRIO chassis for wireless connectivity to distributed WSN measurement nodes with new WSN C Series gateway
• Use new WSN serial nodes for wireless, programmable interface to thousands of sensors and instruments
• Create complete wired and wireless measurement control systems with LabVIEW that are ideal for applications including environment monitoring, industrial measurements and control, and energy monitoring

Product Features

NI 9795 C Series Gateway:

• Aggregates measurement data from distributed WSN nodes, making data available within deployed LabVIEW Real-Time applications running on CompactRIO
• Adds to existing programmable and nonprogrammable WSN gateways to offer choices for cost and flexibility

NI WSN-3230 (1-port RS232) and NI WSN-3231 (1-port RS485) Serial Nodes:

• Features one serial port and two digital I/O channels for discrete inputs, event detection and programmatic control
• Embeds query and parse algorithms directly on WSN node with LabVIEW WSN Module to create autonomous programmable interface to a variety of serial-based instruments, sensors and control boards

Learn more with these additional resources:
· What’s New in WSN: www.ni.com/wsn/whatsnew
· Product and Configuration Guide: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/8710

Palmer Instruments, Inc. has announced the expansion of its line of thermowells. Used to protect both your temperature sensor and your production process, high quality Palmer thermowells conform to the size and design of your sensor to maintain the accuracy and response time, while standing up to the harsh conditions of your process.

Available in a wide variety of materials, Palmer Thermowells have been proudly Made in the USA for over 70 years. Using our unsurpassed expertise, we produce a wide variety of standard designs to fit into your process to protect your temperature sensors. Because our machined wells are built in our factory, we have complete control of the production process – let us engineer a custom design to meet your requirements. Our attention to detail enables us to produce precision wells to fit your chosen sensor, allowing us to build to meet your needs and specifications. Palmer offers thermowells in a large variety of configurations, manufactured from high quality standard or exotic materials for all applications. Testing services are available to ensure that your thermowell can meet any challenge that may arise.

Advantech has introduced a new Hybrid APAX Controller with integrated Controller & Communication capabilities. In order to reduce the amount of integration effort between devices, the industrial automation group of Advantech has launched the APAX-6572 with a combined APAX Data Acquisition and Control (DA&C) technology and Embedded Automation Controller. This device is best suited for factory-wide DA&C applications and as an auxiliary control for unit operations.

The automation controller contains an Intel Atom D510 1.66GHz, 2GB RAM controller with three GbE LAN, two COM ports, one VGA and four USB 2.0 ports. The APAX controller comes with fours slots for expansion. Using this method, customers can install four APAX-5090P modules to provide a maximum of 18 COM ports; four APAX-5095P CAN port cards for a maximum of eight CAN ports, or a combination of the two. A maximum of 32 APAX DA&C I/O modules can also be applied to the this system providing a maximum of 768 Digital I/O and 192 Analogue I/O points.

The APAX-6572 integrates the three main elements of automation, Computing, Control and Communication, into an open system architecture with a small footprint, thereby providing users with an easier and friendlier environment to deploy the control logics. The APAX-6572 supports the IEC-61161-3 standard for LD, FBD, IL, SFC, C, C++ and C# as well as .NET class libraries, thereby providing an open and flexible programming environment so programmers can concentrate on one controller and don’t need to switch languages between controllers.

Product Website

National Instruments today announced the release of giant versions of their existing test and measurement products, specially designed to handle big data. At 10 to 500 times the size of the original options, they have plenty of storage room for even your largest data sets.

“Lately, all I’ve been hearing is ‘big data this’ and ‘big data that’,” said Dr. Tom Bradicich, NI R&D Fellow and resident Big Data Guru at National Instruments. “Here at NI, we pride ourselves on staying at the forefront of technology and innovation, so we’ve decided to get ahead of the curve and release huge versions of our products to handle this data.”

“Are we thought leaders or what?” Bradicich added. For example, one new NI PXI product offers an unprecedented 100-slot, five-deck chassis that allows you to use all 500 modules in the PXI catalog simultaneously. It weighs four tons and measures an impressive 12 feet by 7 feet.

“Over the past 36 years, we’ve seen technology shrink,” said Bradicich. “But, like fashion, technology is cyclical. We think it’s time for big, bulky machines to make a comeback. Remember how great it was when a computer filled up an entire room? Couldn’t lose one if you tried.”

Later in 2013, customers can also expect wheeled versions of products as NI capitalizes on this “mobile” thing that everyone’s talking about.