LabVIEW
Saving waveform data on ATEs
I have a specific requirement on a ATE. This is meant for HALT of a gear box and runs non stop for days on end to complete each schedule. A typical test pattern is as below.
Normally on ATEs we only save waveforms in specified intervals, like if the test is for 1 million cycles we save the wave form once in 10K cycles. Of course the critical paramaters of the cycles are always monitored and rig stopped when they go out of bound.
But in this case client wants to save all the waveform data. Since each cycle is about 4000ms, it takes about 160 points when running with a scan time of 25mS. Even 1000 cycles mean 160 thousand data points. Right now we are using CSV as the file saving format.
What other options are there to handle this requirement ? Been reading about TDMS files but it seems to have a big learning curve to start deploying... maybe I am wrong ?
TDMS is a good choice. Essentially this is a custom binary format with the ability to store "metadata" - e.g. channel names, groupings, custom properties etc.
Using TDMS in LabVIEW is pretty straightforward but it will be more difficult that csv to use with non-NI tools and software.
You can get a download (perhaps packaged with some NI drivers and LabVIEW, definitely available separately) to open them in Excel which can simplify handling in some cases (and certainly simplify quickly checking).
