Virtual Instruments versus Traditional Instruments

Virtual Instruments versus Traditional Instruments

• Stand-alone traditional instruments such as oscilloscopes and waveform generators are very powerful, expensive, and designed to perform one or more specific tasks defined by the vendor. However, the user generally cannot extend or customize them. The knobs and buttons on the instrument, the built-in circuitry, and the functions available to the user, are all specific to the nature of the instrument. In addition, special technology and costly components must be developed to build these instruments, making them very expensive and slow to adapt.

• Virtual instruments, by virtue of being PC-based, inherently take advantage of the benefits from the latest technology incorporated into off-the-shelf PCs. These advances in technology and performance, which are quickly closing the gap between stand-alone instruments and PCs, include powerful processors such as the Pentium 4 and operating systems and technologies such as Microsoft Windows XP, .NET, and Apple Mac OS X. In addition to incorporating powerful features, these platforms also offer easy access to

• powerful tools such as the Internet. Traditional instruments also frequently lack portability, whereas virtual instruments running on notebooks automatically incorporate their portable nature.

• Engineers and scientists whose needs, applications, and requirements change very quickly, need flexibility to create their own solutions. You can adapt a virtual instrument to your particular needs without having to replace the entire device because of the application software installed on the PC and the wide range of available plug-in hardware.

Flexibility
• Except for the specialized components and circuitry found in traditional instruments, the general architecture of stand-alone instruments is very similar to that of a PC-based virtual instrument. Both require one or more microprocessors, communication ports (for example, serial and GPIB), and display capabilities, as well as data acquisition modules.

• What makes one different from the other is their flexibility and the fact that you can modify and adapt the instrument to your particular needs.

• A traditional instrument might contain an integrated circuit to perform a particular set of data processing functions; in a virtual instrument, these functions would be performed by software running on the PC processor. You can extend the set of functions easily, limited only by the power of the software used.

Lower Cost

• By employing virtual instrumentation solutions, you can lower capital costs, system development costs, and system maintenance costs, while improving time to market and the quality of your own products.

Plug-In and Networked Hardware

• There is a wide variety of available hardware that you can either plug into the computer or access through a network. These devices offer a wide range of data acquisition capabilities at a significantly lower cost than that of dedicated devices.

• As integrated circuit technology advances, and off-the-shelf components become cheaper and more powerful, so do the boards that use them. With these advances in technology come an increase in data acquisition rates, measurement accuracy, precision, and better signal isolation.

• Depending on the particular application, the hardware you choose might include analog input or output, digital input or output, counters, timers, filters, simultaneous sampling, and waveform generation capabilities.

• The wide gamut of boards and hardware could include any one of these features or a combination of them.