DC power analyzer wins 2008 honors

Our readers have selected the N6705A DC power analyzer as the 2008 Test Product of the Year.

By Rick Nelson, Editor in Chief -- Test & Measurement World, 4/1/2008 2:00:00 AM

Automatically sequencing power to a board or device under test often requires engineers to write code to control a programmable power supply and then write additional code to measure voltage and current. Not so with the N6705A DC power analyzer from Agilent Technologies. The instrument, one of 12 products chosen as 2008 Best in Test winners by the editors of Test & Measurement World and voted as the Test Product of the Year by our readers, combines in one mainframe up to four DC power-supply modules as well as digital multimeter (DMM), oscilloscope, arbitrary waveform generator, and datalogger functions. Users can program all of the functions from the instrument's front panel and save instrument sequences for future use.

The N6705A DC power analyzer combines four DC power-supply modules as well as digital multimeter, oscilloscope, arbitrary waveform generator, and datalogger functions. Courtesy of Agilent Technologies.

See also:
2008 Test Engineer of the Year
2008 Test of Time winner
2008 Best in Test winners
T&MW Awards Program

Kevin Cavell, product manager for the N6705A DC power analyzer, said the concept for the instrument grew out of work done several years ago in the development of low-profile mainframes for rack-mount applications. “They were designed specifically for ATE systems,” he said, “and we got a lot of great feedback about them. Our ATE customers loved them, but as we sold more and more, we found they weren't only being sold into ATE systems—they were also being sold into R&D labs.” That prompted additional feedback, he said, with customers asking, “Why don't you come out with a more bench-friendly mainframe?” Market research, he said, confirmed the need for such a product.

Cavell pointed out that to take advantage of the capabilities of power modules within the original low-profile mainframe, users would have to write some code. In contrast, he said, “The DC power analyzer was designed to not have to be programmed at all.” Of course, users who do wish to program can do so in languages like Agilent Vee or Microsoft Visual Basic by way of the analyzer's USB, GPIB, and LAN (LXI class C) ports. But, Cavell emphasized, a key design goal was to ensure that any function a user might like to do—ranging from generating arbitrary waveforms with some power behind them to datalogging—could be done from the front panel.

To that end, he said, the Agilent team relied on usability experts to come up with the right front-panel design and menu system to make operation intuitive—to give the instrument the look and feel of an oscilloscope, for example, so anyone who knew how to use an oscilloscope could immediately begin making the types of measurements of which the analyzer is capable. That took a significant effort on the part of Agilent's firmware team, who augmented the original low-profile system's code to support the new instrument's front-panel, menu-driven user interface. “It took a little intuition and a lot of programming to put the functionality all together into one box,” he said.

Hardware and software engineers at Agilent’s Bud Lake, NJ, facility contributed to the N6705A DC power analyzer’s success. Courtesy of Agilent Technologies.

Initial reports, Cavell said, indicate that the Agilent hardware and software teams succeeded. Once customers grasp the concept of the product, he said, they realize how much time they can save by not having to put their own systems together and write their own code. He concluded, “They can do tasks in minutes that used to take hours or even days.”

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