Switch card gets dense
Staff -- Test & Measurement World, 6/1/2004
Engineers never seem to have enough space for switch matricies, so National Instruments has upped the ante with the PXI-2532 card. Consisting of 512 individual relays, the 3U-sized card contains sixteen 2x16 matrix banks that you can configure in ways such as 4x2176 or 8x1088.
You can load a step scan with up to 32,000 steps into the card and then trigger them without intervention from the host computer. You can switch at speeds up to 2000 switches/s and carry up to 0.5 A per switch.
Engineers are also concerned with relay life, and each PXI-2532 card counts the number of closures for each relay. You can download the count through the card's software driver. You also get a configuration application program with each card.
Price $4795. National Instruments, Austin, TX. 512-683-0100; www.ni.com.
