USER MANUAL AND SPECIFICATIONS

NI Automated Measurements Board for NI ELVIS III The NI Automated Measurements Board for NI ELVIS III supports teaching the fundamentals of measurements and instrumentation for common electrical and physical phenomenon. You can explore the full signal chain using real sensors and signal conditioning elements, with complete signal access at the inputs and outputs of each section. Extensible courseware, a rich set of experiments, and an open architecture supporting custom software and hardware extensions enable teaching concepts from basic sensor operation to advanced automated measurement techniques.

The signal chain elements can be configured to support a wide variety of sensor types, allowing you to measure phenomenon such as voltage, current, resistance, force, strain, temperature, vibration, pressure, light intensity, and many more.

Hardware Overview Figure 1. NI Automated Measurements Board

ADC_REF

PASSIVE LOW PASS FILTER PASSIVE HIGH PASS FILTERUNITY GAIN AMPLIFIERQUARTER BRIDGE ANALOG-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER

NI AUTOMATED MEASUREMENTS BOARD©COPYRIGHT 2019 ®

ESD PAD

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

FR O

N T

Electrostatic Sensitive Connectors

ni.com/teach/measurements

FULL BRIDGE

RESISTIVE SENSORS

INVERTING AMPLIFIER

NON-INVERTING AMPLIFIER

INSTRUMENTATION AMPLIFIER

A/AO0

A/AO1 A/AI4

A/AI0

USER 1

USER 0

FLTR

USER 3

USER 2 A/AI2

A/AI6

FLTR

FLTR

PMODPHOTOTRANSISTOR

ACTIVE SENSORS & PIEZOELECTRIC SENSORS

THERMOCOUPLE INPUT

AMP AMP

INA

AMP

AMP

J2 J3

J4 J5

J6

5

6

3 4 17

18

19

24 25

30 31

36

37

VR2

VR3

38

5V

39

40

41

VR4

42

J68

3V3 GND 4 3 2 1

3V3 GND 8 7 6 5J8

J7

5V

7

B/AI2 B/AI6

+

–

Q1

5V

9

10

5V

J1

1 2

11

13 14

12

15 16

22

5V

+ –

+ –

+ –

+ – 20 21 26

FLTR

FLTR

23

FLTR

28

27

29

FLTR

32

33

1ST ORDER ACTIVE LOW PASS FILTER 1ST ORDER ACTIVE HIGH PASS FILTER

2ND ORDER ACTIVE LOW PASS FILTER 2ND ORDER ACTIVE HIGH PASS FILTER

RESISTANCE MEASUREMENT (BRIDGED)

RESISTANCE MEASUREMENT (CONSTANT CURRENT)

CURRENT MEASUREMENT

VOLTAGE MEASUREMENT

34 35

5V

VR1

INA

+ –

+ –

+ –

+ –

+

–

ESD PAD

ADC ADC_IN

ADC_CM

GND

CNV

CS

SCK

SDO

+3.3V–15V +5V+15V

POWER

15 161 2

A

A

A

AA

A

A A

A

A

A

A

A

8

1

3

3

4 5 62 2 1 7

8

9

10

2211 1112 13 14

B/AI0

B/AI4

1. Power Rail LEDs 2. Ground Test Hooks 3. Sensor Section 4. Amplifier Section 5. Low Pass Filter Section 6. High Pass Filter Section 7. Analog to Digital Converter Section

8. Resistance Measurement Section 9. Current Measurement Section 10. Voltage Measurement Section 11. Measurement I/O Section 12. Electrical Expansion Section 13. Solderless Breadboard/Mechanical Expansion 14. Pmod Connectivity

Software Support Comprehensive resources are available at ni.com/teach/measurements. These include extensible courseware, consisting of a series of labs covering the fundamentals of measurements technology. Labs include theory, hands on experimentation, and student assessments to check for understanding. Resources also include an extensive set of LabVIEW

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http://ni.com/teach/measurements

experiments, each focused on a particular learning objective. These range from basics of voltage measurement to complete signal chain use for common sensors such as strain gauges and thermistors. Finally, custom experiments and automated measurement systems can be created through the full support of LabVIEW RT and LabVIEW FPGA programmability.

Hardware Description There are four main sections on the NI Automated Measurements Board: • Electrical fundamentals • Signal chain elements • Prototyping expansion • Pmod expansion

The electrical fundamentals section teaches concepts related to measuring voltage, current, and resistance. The signal chain elements section teaches circuit elements used to interface with common sensors including excitation, amplification, filtering, and analog to digital conversion. The prototyping expansion section provides an area for creating custom signal conditioning circuitry, as well as the ability to integrate these custom circuits with the built-in signal conditioning elements. The Pmod section provides an alternative method for making electrical and physical measurements, with small modules that typically integrate some or all of the necessary signal chain elements required for a particular measurement. The block diagram below illustrates how the sections interact with the NI ELVIS III resources:

Current

LED

Sense Resistor Select

Prototyping Expansion

Filtering

LED

Pmod

LED

Electrical FundamentalsSignal Chain Elements

Resistance

LED

Constant Current Setting

Voltage

LED

Voltage Source

Sensors Connectivity

Excitations

LED

Amplification

Gain Select

LED

ADC

LED

SPI Interface 3x DIO

9x DIO

2x A

/A O

8x D

IO

4x D

IF F

A I

1x DIO

1x DIO, 2x B/AO (Shared)

1x DIO, 2x B/AO (Shared)

2x DIO

2x DIO

1x DIO

3x DIO, 2x B/AO (Shared)

3x DIFF AI

3x DIO

4x DIO

ELVIS III RIO Resources

A typical experiment consists of connecting measurement IO to various combinations of circuit elements using banana plug cables1. The LabVIEW based experiments automate the

1 Ensure that the contact length of the banana plug cable used does not exceed 9 mm.

NI Automated Measurements Board for NI ELVIS III User Manual and Specifications | © National Instruments | 3

acquisition and generation of signals necessary to perform the experiment. LEDs on the board illuminate to indicate which circuit elements are used by a given experiment, simplifying experiment setup.

Measurement I/O The measurement I/O section consists of multiple analog input and analog output channels accessed through banana plug connectors. This provides simple connectivity to the other sections of the board, both for making measurements and generating stimuli. These channels are provided by the NI ELVIS III Control I/O, and are directly routed to the banana plugs from the board edge connector.

Figure 2. Measurement I/O Section

A/AO0

A/AO1 A/AI4

A/AI0 A/AI2

A/AI6

B/AI0

B/AI4

23 11

1. Bank A analog input 2. Bank B analog input 3. Bank A analog output

The analog input section consists of two identical banks of analog inputs. Each bank includes an ADC, gain stage, mode selection, and channel multiplexer. The gain stage determines the input range for the conversion (±10 V, ±5 V, ±2 V, ±1 V). The mode selection controls whether the input is configured for single ended or differential measurement. A single ended measurement measures the difference between the selected signal and ground. A differential measurement measures the difference between the selected signal and its associated signal pair. The differential pairs are AI0/AI4, AI1/AI5, AI2/AI6, and AI3/AI7. The channel multiplexer is used to select the active channel. The two banks can operate independently from each other, or synchronously to provide simultaneous sampling on two channels.

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Figure 3. Available Analog Input Measurement I/O

B:AI6

AGND

A:AI0

A:AI7

A:AI5

A:AI3

A:AI1

A:AI6

A:AI4

A:AI2

GAINADC MODE

M U

X

B:AI0

B:AI7

B:AI5

B:AI3

B:AI1

AGND

B:AI4

B:AI2

GAINADC MODE

M U

X

Only channels A/AI0, A/AI2, A/AI4, A/AI6, B/AI0, and B/AI4 are exposed through the banana plugs while channels A/AI1 and A/AI5 are exposed through the fixed solderless breadboard strip. The other channels are used for other operations on the board. Refer to the Programming Details on page 32 for a complete listing of NI ELVIS III channel assignments.

The analog output section consists of two identical channels of analog output. Each channel consists of a DAC and output buffer with a fixed +/-10V output range. There are no configuration settings for the analog output channels.

Figure 4. Available Analog Output Measurement I/O

DAC A:AO0

BUFFER

DAC A:AO1

BUFFER

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