FlexDMM

Engineers now can accurately measure from picoamps to kilovolts with the new National Instruments PXI-4071 FlexDMM – a multifunction device that features a 7½-digit (26 bits) digital multimeter and an 1.8 MS/s isolated digitizer.

The NI PXI-4071 FlexDMM offers fast, accurate voltage measurements from ±10 nV to ±1000 V and resistance measurements from 10 microohms to 5 gigaohms. It also uses a solid-state current shunt configuration that offers 8 DC current ranges from 1 µA to 3 A and 6 AC rms current ranges from 100 µA to 3 A.

The FlexDMM is claimed to be the most accurate DMM available for PXI with DC reading rates of 7 S/s at 7½ digits. For higher throughput needs, the FlexDMM offers a maximum DC reading rate of 10 kS/s at 4½ digits, five times faster than traditional GPIB-controlled DMMs.

In isolated digitizer mode, the FlexDMM can acquire DC-coupled waveforms in all voltage and current ranges with a 1.8 MS/s maximum sample rate. With the built-in isolation, engineers can measure differential waveforms up to 500 V.

By changing the digitizer sampling rate, engineers can vary the resolution of the digitizer from 10 to 23 bits. Engineers can analyze transients, fly-back signals or other aperiodic high-voltage AC waveforms in both the time and frequency domains using the NI LabVIEW graphical development environment with the FlexDMM in isolated digitizer mode.

Engineers can increase the channel count of their FlexDMM systems by integrating them with NI switch modules such as the NI PXI-2532 512-crosspoint high-density matrix. Using the FlexDMM with NI switch modules and NI Switch Executive switch management software, they can measure thousands of channels with a single multimeter. The NI PXI-4071 FlexDMM includes NI-DMM driver software for NI LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI, and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.