Internal power supply access in pxi 1010/1011

[Stuart B]

I am intending to buy a PXI 1010/1011 chassis for a control system. Is it possible to connect into the internal supply to provide 12V or 5V and can source 5-10amps for a short duration (tens of miliseconds).

[Julianna]

I do not believe you will be able to do what you are proposing. I am not sure how you are intending to connect to the power supply. If you intend to connect directly to the power supply, opening or removing the case will void the chassis warranty. If you intend to source through a DAQ card in the chassis, DAQ cards source a maximum of 1 amp per card.

The 12 V line provides 4 amps. The 5 V line provides 20 amps. You can determine the available amperage by subtracting the sum the requirements for the PXI controller and modules you intend to have in the system. Also, if you use a PXI embedded controller, you could run into issues of the controller rebooting because the voltage drops out of spec when you source from the power supply.

Julianna Forrest

Applications Engineer
National Instruments
http://ni.com/support

[Stuart B]

Thanks for your answer. Is it possible to mount some form of auxilary powersupply within the chassis? The solution would look far more elegant if this was possible.

[Julianna]

I am not aware of any specific PXI or CompactPCI modules that would provide the functionality you are looking for. There are cPCI power supply modules that act as backup power to the PXI or cPCI backplane (they mostly act as a battery so that if the main power supply goes down the controller can still be shut down). Also there are modules that supply power to external equipment; however, these modules draw their power from the chassis power supply. www.picmg.com and www.pxisa.org both have product listings for PXI and cPCI cards. You can look there for the power supply options that exist and see if any fit your needs.