Ball Systems designed a small custom handheld test platform based around the NI single-board RIO deployable embedded device, adding additional circuitry and packaging. Ultimately, the team developed a tool that fully evaluates bus health, performance, layout, power, and bandwidth utilization and providing a consistent and reliable problem diagnosis.

The result is a portable, battery powered system that performs high level bus functions including:

• Bus device inventory
• Bus delay testing
• Address scanning
• Bus monitoring
• Bus traffic storage
• The ability to simulate a downstream bus to an upstream controller

The system also performs physical layer testing including:

• Cable resistance measurement
• Bus bias voltage measurement
• Bus power (voltage and current)
• Signal margin measurement

You can read the full article “Test and measurement sector grapples with standardization, complex systems” at Military Embedded.

For more information about our aerospace and defense test systems, check out our project gallery.