Laser Measurement & Characterization of Flat Panel Displays Customer Case This customer's application involves the characterization of flat panel displays (used in laptop computers, computer game displays, etc.) via laser scanning. The laser is bounced off a number of mirrors and then through lenses, from which it is scattered. The scattered laser light must then be analyzed in order to determine the quality of the flat panel display. This laser measurement system is used not only by flat panel display industries, but also by disk drive manufacturers to analyze platter quality and, in the near future, for characterizing silicon [...]

Laser Signals Striking Silicon-Diode Target Customer Case The customer wants to capture the output of some silicon diodes looking at a laser target. The typical signal is anywhere from 20mv to 1V in amplitude and 0 to 15ns in length. There are up to 16 of these diodes that are looking at the same target. Each diode has a different filter so the post-trigger depth and amplitude-scale must be user-adjustable. Their main interest is to sample and digitize the signals for archiving, with later retrieval and plotting. Fancy software is not needed for display as the data is gathered [...]

Optical Scanning of Drive Media Customer Case The customer's application is optical scanning for drive testing. The goal is to identify burnt or damaged spots on the disk. The scanning system is generally used in Quality Control, Head-Disk Interaction and Failure Analysis. There is a need for continuous acquisition during the spiral scan. The speed of the disk is 10,000 RPM and the requirement is to capture 65,000 to 80,000 samples each revolution. A single channel is needed for the acquisition at 10 MegaSamples/second or greater. High vertical resolution will aid in measuring the properties and ultimately the degradation [...]

Disk Drive Track Scanning Customer Case The customer is trying to digitize an 83 millisecond long signal coming out of a disk mounted on a rotary motor. This corresponds to one full revolution of the disk. The analog signal coming out of the Device Under Test (DUT) is of approximately 2 MHz bandwidth. Currently, the customer is sampling at 10 MSPS and would like to increase the oversampling to get better time resolution. At present, they are using a CompuScope 225 - 1M, which has sufficient memory to digitize the entire revolution in on-board memory at the 10 MSPS [...]

Print Head Testing Customer Case The customer's task is to develop a system that is capable of driving and testing a prototype printhead. Because they work in R&D, requirements are constantly changing and therefore their optimal solution would be re-programmable - hence, their choice of the GaGe CompuGen 3250. The current version of the printhead requires two 16-bit data busses, as well as several control lines such as DataClock, Strobe, ModeSelection and End_of_Scanline. Thus, they have chosen a synchronous two CompuGen 3250 board system (Master/Slave) as the basis for their system. Their next iteration includes an improvement in system [...]

MEMS-Based High Throughput Screening Customer Case The customer needs to do frequency analysis to determine the resonant frequency of an oscillating micro-fabricated device. They will use a Laser Doppler Vibrometer to monitor the physical oscillation. This is an instrument that looks at the light reflected from the surface of a moving part to determine the velocity or relative position of the part. Analysis of the motion as a function of the driving frequency determines the resonant frequency. Upon excitation at the resonant frequency, the motion is at its maximum. The expected resonant frequencies are on the order of 1 [...]

Automatic Accelerometer Calibration System Customer Case The customer's Automated Accelerometer Calibration System provides NIST traceable calibration of most accelerometer types, whether self-generating piezo-electric or accelerometers requiring current or voltage excitation. The output of the accelerometer can be charge or voltage, single- ended or differential, AC or DC coupled, isolated or grounded. In building the automatic calibration system, the need is for optimum versatility with regards to the data acquisition card. LabVIEW is the desired control software, and Signal to Noise Ratio and high vertical resolution is of utmost importance for the small variations that occur in Vibration and Shock [...]

Satellite Down Line Converter Customer Case A customer needs to capture incoming satellite communication signals at a ground-based receiver. After analog demodulation and amplification, the signal is digitized by two 12-bit ADC chips clocked at a rate of 47.3 MHz. One ADC is used to scale a high-voltage input signal that has a mean value of 25.85 V. The second ADC chip is used to get better accuracy on the same signal, using a proprietary signal-scaling technique. The first ADC scales the full input voltage so that the second ADC only sees a small 50 mV signal around the [...]

Deep PCI Capture of Fast Charge-Couple Device (CCD) Array Data Customer Case A customer wants to digitize data from a 256x256 infrared charge-couple device (CCD) array. The array data is clocked at 4 MHz through two output channels. Exactly two clock cycles occur between 12-bit line signals, and a dozen or more clock cycles occur between successive frames. The customer wants to digitize the data for a minute or more. Since light level signals from the array can vary widely in amplitude, 12-bit resolution is required. GaGe Case Solution The customer will use the CompuScope 512/PCI with the External [...]

Image Acquisition of Three Analog Cameras Customer Case The customer is using three independent cameras made by Cidtec. These cameras provide an analog output as well as a pixel clock (of up to 10 MHz). It is assumed that FRAME_START and LINE_START signals are also provided. All digital signals are TTL levels. These cameras also have the ability to zoom in on a portion of the image to provide better resolution. These smaller images can be output by the camera at rates up to 200 to 300 Hertz. The full frame can be output at rates up to 30 [...]