Analog inputs

DEWESoft 7 offers interface to most popular AD cards and devices on the market. We have interfaces to our own measurement devices like DEWE 43 or DS MINITAUR and from others like Dewetron Orion, Spectrum, National Instruments, Data translation and Microstar. The cards can be connected through PCI, PXI, USB or Firewire interface.

The speed of the AD cards varies from few kHz per channel to several MHz per channel. The sample rate for each channel can be individually reduced.

For slower data, additional analog channels from Dewetron EPAD module, Nudam RS485 based modules or Ethernet based Dewetron LPAD modules are supported.

The Dewetron front-end amplifiers allow the direct connection of virtually any analog signal:

• voltage and current,
• voltage, current and digital output sensors,
• temperature,
• vibration,
• strain gages,
• frequency measurement,
• and others.

Sensor database

DEWESoft offers a sensor database which can be filled manually or using TEDS interface for easy and correct scaling of analog channels. The measurement setup can be imported from Excel or any other software which is the most important for high channels count applications.

Counter interface

The counter interface in DEWESoft 7 allows to capture:

• counting,
• encoder,
• frequency,
• period,
• pulse width and
• duty cycle.

There are several types of counters: our so called super counters (DEWE 43, DS MINITAUR) allow very precise timing and counting measurement. The counting is also performed between the counts and DEWESoft calculates the counter values interpolated to each acquired sample (see the third image below).

It sounds complicated, but it is a splendid feature which increases the resolution of counting to allow advanced applications like combustion analysis, torsional vibration and order tracking. Other counter interface hardware like National Instruments or Data Translation allows only basic counting.

Simple webcams

Webcams connect to any computer via USB or Firewire, and provide an inexpensive and convenient way to add a video reference to any data recording. Virtually every webcam in the world uses Windows DirectX compatible drivers, which DEWESoft can use easily.

Synchronized DEWE-CAM Video

For applications requiring video which is truly synchronized to the dynamic sample rate, we have support for DEWE-CAM-01 from Dewetron. A high quality image with automatic gain and iris, and even shutter speed (selectable) are controlled directly by the A/D card, which generates a pulse to drive the camera. The result is a stunning correlation between each frame and the data. It is also possible to sync the camera to the angle-based output of a rotation ... this allows the camera to be put in phase with a fan or other rotating component, even when the speed is changing continuously. The DEWE-CAM-01 can acquire video at 640x480 up to 72 fps, and at 320x240 up to 240 fps. Other speeds are possible with different image sizes.

Photron high speed video

DEWESoft 7 offers support for high speed video cameras from Photron, adding the interface for combining high speed analog and high speed video world in one. The Photron camera can acquire video data with more than 100000 frames per second.

MIXED CAMERAS are supported... You can combine a thermo-camera with USB webcamera or analog or DEWE-CAM. You can also combine a webcam or analog cam with the DEWE-CAM.

Thermocams can see temperature

DEWESoft 7 is also compatible with several high-end thermocameras from NEC and Mikron. These cameras output a color coded thermal image digitally via firewire... But it's an interactive image! You can hover the mouse anywhere and see the temperature, and even draw a box with the mouse and the min, max, and average temperature values will be shown on the window.

Additional camera options

In addition, most FLIR© cameras can be used in the analog output mode.

• ANALOG CAMERAS are supported by means of an NTSC or PAL to USB converter, which we can install within most Dewetron systems.
• MULTIPLE CAMERAS are supported (requires DEWESoft 7 Professional), including webcam, analog (using a multiplexer) or DEWE-CAM synchronized cameras.
• MIXED CAMERAS are supported... You can combine a thermocam with USB webcam or analog or DEWE-CAM-01. You can also combine a webcam or analog cam with the DEWE-CAM.

CAN bus

One of the most important vehicle buses today is the CAN (controller area network) bus. DEWESoft 7 supports following CAN devices on PCI, PCMCIA or USB interfaces:

• Dewesoft DEWE-43 and DS MINITAUR,
• Dewetron CAN devices,
• National Instruments,
• Softing,
• Vector,
• and more...

Today the CAN bus is present in cars, trucks, boats, tanks, tractors, harvesters and basically anything which has a modern engine built in.

It is very robust two-wire interface and is therefore also used as the interface for many different sensors, especially in automotive industry, like gyro platform, speed sensors, torque wheel, pressure, flow transducers and others.

DEWESoft can decode any kind of data from the CAN bus in read only or acknowledge mode. It supports importing of standard DBC libraries for easy setup. A modern car has several hundreds or even thousands of channels on the bus, but it is very easy to work with those in DEWESoft.

OBDII on CAN

OBDII is standardized vehicle interface which must be implemented in each vehicle sold in the USA, and California State environmental law requires a standard interface for measurement of basic parameters of the exhaust system.

Parameters such as vehicle speed, engine RPM, throttle position, an certain temperatures, can be read out of any vehicle which has the OBDII interface. On DEWESoft side all that is needed is CAN card and a special cable to connect to OBDII.

J1939

J1939 is a standardized truck interface working on the CAN bus. Virtually all the trucks complies with that standard and all that is needed in DEWESoft is a CAN card - DEWESoft does all the rest.

J1587

An older standard truck interface working on RS485 is J1587. DEWESoft supports J1587 interface from Vector.

GPS interface

GPS technology is used in three main application areas:

1. to find the position on earth,
2. to determine the velocity of an object and
3. to get precise absolute time information.

DEWESoft 7 uses all three areas. For basic positioning, DEWESoft supports NMEA GPS interface. If you have a GPS receiver which sends the data according to NMEA specification, it will work in DEWESoft.

For getting precise velocity information, this is not enough. For this purpose we support our own devices, Ashtech, Topcon, Novatel and Javad. These devices are sending position and velocity information with 20 to 100 Hz update rate, which is enough to conduct vehicle dynamics testing.

The GPS visual control draws the motion track, and allows you to import maps to be shown behind the track.

Google Earth export

Easily integrate and display your acquired GPS position data with DEWESoft's Google Earth© export capability. Acquired GPS data can be exported into Google Earth KML file format and displayed within Google Earth software.

PCM telemetry

Aircrafts as well as space vehicles such as the US Space shuttle acquire on-board data, digitize them, then send the data to ground stations. They do this via pulse code modulated data stream, also known as PCM. DEWESoft supports the Ulyssix Tarsus PCM-01 card to decode, visualize and store this PCM data. The data is equipped with an IRIG clock time stamp and therefore can be matched to the analog FM channels, video channels, and other data sources. For more info, see the PCM data solution report.

Arinc 429, MIL-STD-1553

Our interface for Ballard ARINC and 1553 devices can now handle multiple ARINC 429 and MIL-STD-1553 data busses. You can capture filter, display and record data bus traffic, and more. It offers extensive possibilities to convert binary data to user recognizable format. Quickly build transmit schedules and create transmit on click messages. This DEWESoft option features an intuitive and easy to use interface. There are also extra features like auto-scanning and complete data bus traffic recording and replay without hardware.

Timing devices

When synchronizing several devices, or when an absolute time stamp is needed, DEWESoft 7 provides the interfaces to acquire the data with external exact clock source. There are two sources possible:

• IRIG timecode synchronization,
• GPS timecode synchronization,
• NTP SYNC synchronization.

IRIG is the standard in aerospace industry providing absolute time in the form of amplitude modulated sine wave or digital signal. The accuracy of the time stamps depends mainly on the signal source, but is usually below 1 ms.

GPS provides beside position and velocity also exact time information. We are using this technology with a special Dewetron GPS clock hardware to decode the absolute precise time and drive the AD card with an absolute accuracy below 20 ns. With this technology it is possible to capture data with instruments placed on any part of the globe and synchronize the data exactly to each other.

With DEWESoft NET these instruments can act like a single one. This technology is a base for all distributed applications.

Plugins

DEWESoft 7 offers a so called plugin technology, where different kind of add-ons can be created to extend DEWESoft in virtually unlimited ways. There are many add-on types that can be implemented using our plugin technology:

• add support for additional acquisition devices,
• custom mathematics,
• custom export formats,
• customs visual controls,
• and more...

Many important data acquisition interfaces are already supported. Please take a look at developers section for resources about plugins development.

Genesys ADMA gyro platform

The GeneSys ADMA device is a high speed/high performance gyro platform used in automotive industry to measure absolute position, velocities, accelerations, angles (yaw, pitch, roll) and angular velocities. The interface allows full control, initialization and setup of the platform. The data is perfectly synchronized to all other data source due to the GPS absolute time stamps, so we can use DEWESoft NET and two platforms to measure relative distance between two vehicles in real time.

Kistler Roadyn torque wheels

The Kistler Roadyn torque wheels are used to measure forces, torque, speed and other parameters on the vehicles. The main application is development of vehicles (collecting road load data).

Kistler offers several digital interfaces, DEWESoft supports CAN and Ethernet interface. In case with ethernet, the wheels are set and programmed from DEWESoft, so there is no need to have any additional software package.

XSens MT

The XSens MT is a gyro sensor which has three acceleration sensors, three rate of turn and three magnetometers offering the position, angle and velocity output. It offers much less precision and long term stability than Genesys, so it is intended for basic usage for limited time.

SCRAMNet

SCRAMNet cards offer the shared memory array to distribute data among different computers with a very low latency using optical links. It is mainly used if the same data needs to be shared in a computer network. DEWESoft offers plugin to receive and decode data from the Scramnet cards.