MeT - Army Avionics Test Station

ISO 9001

Solutions

Army Avionics Test Station:

THE TASK: To develop a fully automated, self contained and portable universal test station using National Instruments hardware, specialised avionics test equipment and total LabVIEW control.

THE AIM: To fully test a variety of army avionics electronics equipment reliably and quickly using one all purpose test set with minimal user input.

THE SOLUTION: Using a National Instruments PXI/SCXI combination chassis containing Pentium controller unit with GPIB a Digital Multimeter, Scope, Function Generator, Digital IO and a 4x128 Matrix module a Test rack was constructed. A LabVIEW application was written to take the previously tedious manual tests and automate them using the NI hardware. GPIB commands were used to control specialised avionics test equipment.

The project to date is ongoing with very successful results so far. To date applications to test two different radios, a transponder and a control panel have been completed. Continuing development will see many more test modules for different equipment being developed, making use of the existing test station hardware.

CUSTOMER BENIFITS: The overall benefit to the customer is a HUGE saving in both time and money and a very significant increase in reliability, accuracy and consistency of results along with detailed history of any units tested.