Do LabVIEW/TestStand systems have to be complex and expensive?

By Anders Pedersen Sekanina · 8 October 2019 · ← Back to blog

When I present LabVIEW and TestStand systems to small and medium-sized companies, I often encounter the perception that LabVIEW/TestStand is complex, expensive and only for large companies. Because of this, they often build their own test systems from scratch.

Here I try to turn that around and explain how much comes out of the box. By using a company like Sekanina Electronics you get all the basic test functions included and only need to have your product-specific test algorithms developed.

A test system set up in a single day?

A simple semi-automated test system that could be up and running at your premises in a single day might look like this:

1. The operator connects power to the D.U.T. (Device Under Test).
2. The D.U.T. serial number is scanned with a barcode reader, which starts the test.
3. The screen shows two test points (red and black) where the operator must place the probes. When the probes are placed correctly and the voltage is OK, a green signal is shown on the screen.
4. The operator presses a foot pedal and the measurement is saved – for example using a digital multimeter that you already have in the company (National Instruments, Keysight or others).
5. Steps 3–4 can be repeated for as many measurement points as you need.
6. After the test is complete, a report is generated in a format that is both presentable for printing and structured in a way that makes it easy to extract statistics at a later point.

Additional test steps can of course be added to make the test more specific to your product, but the above gives an idea of how much you get with LabVIEW and TestStand, and therefore how far you can get in a very short time.

A further improvement would be to make the test fully automated by placing the board in a simple fixture with test probes.

Why use Sekanina Electronics?

When you use an external consultant like Sekanina Electronics for developing your test system, development is made more efficient through our extensive library of previously developed drivers and modules. You also gain a highly qualified, dedicated partner who is happy to follow the project all the way until it is running in production – and who can support it going forward.

Read more about LabVIEW and TestStand services from Sekanina Electronics on the Services page.

/Anders Pedersen Sekanina