Microstar Laboratories has announced Dapserver 500 test, measurement, and control products, combining a five-slot PCI backplane and a 10-slot Eurocard cage in an industrial grade chassis.
A Pentium M processor runs server software on a board that occupies one of the PCI slots.
This software, and the software running on Dap boards, protects your application from local or network-related delays.
The new hardware products, the Dapserver 500 and Dapserver 500R models, each include a SATA hard drive.
Both models have front-panel handles suitable for equipment installed in 19in racks, and arrive fully assembled and ready to connect to a network.
The Dapserver 500R uses the same components as the Dapserver 500, built into specially engineered packaging for rugged environments.
Every Dapserver is pre-loaded with all the software needed.
Signal Interfacing Dapserver products conform to the signal-interfacing channel architecture used by Microstar Laboratories: signal connectors on 3U (100mm high) Eurocard B (220mm deep) expansion boards that typically pre-process a signal.
A Dapserver can contain up to 10 of these boards, and it can connect to more in other rack-mounted industrial enclosures.
Most Microstar Laboratories expansion boards multiplex inputs or outputs to or from Dap boards.
Many perform additional functions.
Every new board now made is intelligent - it communicates with, and can be configured by, the onboard intelligence of the Dap connected to it.
These boards perform any signal conversion required and connect to a digital backplane preinstalled in the 10-slot Eurocard cage in a Dapserver.
The website gives the full range, arranged in these eight main function groups: simple termination; simple multiplexing; anti-alias filtering; simultaneous sampling; isolation; counter/timer; quadrature-decoder; and signal conditioning.
The point above on isolation refers to isolation from high voltage and power.
The boards all include the level of isolation required to prevent ground loops.
Using these boards saves users from having to take other steps against this common nuisance.
If spurious currents are corrupting signals, the application is not doing the job it is supposed to do.
A Dapserver has Windows software and the Daptools Professional software package - including full versions of Dapcell network software and Dapstudio development software - preloaded on the hard drive, running on a Pentium M processor board in one of the PCI slots.
The remaining four PCI slots can contain any current Dap boards, and Microstar Laboratories provides hardware and software that combines these Dap boards into a single synchronised system.
Users can start development right away by using an Ethernet cable to connect a laptop, or connect the Dapserver to a network and use any PC on the network.
Users can also work directly on the Dapserver: add a screen, and connect a keyboard and mouse to the front-panel USB ports.
Every Dap board includes an onboard processor running a real-time operating system.
Windows applications that support DLL calls can communicate with and control this real-time operating system.
Users can communicate with and control a Dap board from Dapstudio - a Windows application from Microstar Laboratories - or from third-party (or your own) software on any PC on the network.
Dap boards, in the same or in different Dapservers, also communicate among themselves independently of Windows to synchronise their clocks with one another.
They then all work synchronously as a networked data acquisition system running in real time, free from local or network-related delays.
