New Software Simplifies Data Logging With NI CompactDAQ Hardware for Structural Test and Monitoring Applications

06/03/2013

National Instruments announced Chameleon for NI CompactDAQ, a software package developed by NI Gold Alliance Partner PVI Systemsand available on the LabVIEW Tools Network, to create turnkey systems for NI data acquisition hardware that are simple and intuitive to set up and operate. These scalable systems can span to a large number of channels, yet still be managed within a configuration-based environment without programming.

The combination of Chameleon and the NI CompactDAQ platform is ideal for a variety of structural test and monitoring applications, including pressure and strain measurements for jet engine testing, transportation shock load measurements, strain acquisition for vehicle-to-structure impact testing and vibration measurements for marine structures and aircraft. Chameleon has a strong track record of success with military accounts, such as Northrop Grumman Corporation and Raytheon BBN Technologies.

“Using Chameleon turnkey software based on LabVIEW and DAQ software, we can measure more than 32 channels of pressure data from our sensors with expansion capabilities while maintaining time-synchronized data from transient shot events on the firing range,” said Jeff Mazurek, director of sales engineering at Raytheon BBN.

Chameleon Features

• Support for voltage, IEPE, temperature, bridge and current sensors
• Data visualization with multiple traces and graphs, using pre-recorded or live data
• Data stored locally to technical data management streaming files for simple integration with LabVIEW or NI DIAdem
• Calculated virtual channels with alarms on virtual or real channels
• On-the-fly update of virtual channel equations and data-logging rate
• Customization and integration with LabVIEW for additional flexibility

National Instruments, www.ni.com