Cycle and analyze DC power

Automatically sequencing power to a board or device generally requires you to write code for a programmable power supply and then measure voltage and current with a different instrument. Not so with the N6705A DC power analyzer from Agilent Technologies, which combines up to four DC power supplies with digital multimeter (DMM), oscilloscope, arbitrary waveform generator, and datalogger functions. Thus, the instrument provides DC power for your UUT and also makes the voltage and current measurements. It can display all channels in oscilloscope or digital multimeter (DMM) displays on the screen at once.

The N6705A accepts up to four modular DC power supplies from the family of 21 that also work with the company’s N6700 ATE power supply. You can then configure a power-up sequence using the N6705A’s front panel, and you can save sequences in the instrument for later use.

Should a problem occur, you can remove power by pressing the emergency stop button. Even then, the N6705A will continue to record voltage and current. The datalogger mode looks like a strip-chart recorder; it has 64 Mbytes of memory. You can save screens as images, and you can save data for export.

Prices: N6705A mainframe—$6500. Power-supply modules range in price from $450 to $2500. Agilent Technologies, www.agilent.com.