Internet of Test? The Internet of Things for Test and Measurement

Editor’s Note: This article has been submitted by National Instruments. 

What does the Internet of Things (IoT) mean for automated test? Although the “Internet of Things” may sound like marketing jargon to some test managers, smart sensing devices are poised to become the center of a new technology revolution. Industry leaders such as Microsoft, Raytheon and Qualcomm have already achieved distributed sensing, intelligence and analytics through differentiated software and hardware platforms. For progressive test managers, IoT is the opportunity to realize rapid improvement, higher throughput and lower test costs.

What Is the IoT for Test and Measurement?

The IoT is reaching the test and measurement industry at an interesting time. Skeptical test managers may hear heralds of “disruptive change,” but have a hard time perceiving how the technology could meaningfully impact their systems. Meanwhile, the same test managers have actually been at the helm of distributed sensing and analytics technology for decades — the same technology IoT proponents proclaim is driving progressive change.

Although the technology may seem familiar to automated test organizations, there is significant opportunity for forward-looking test managers ready to profit from this mega-trend. The key is to understand how the IoT applies to test and measurement, and learn from established companies that have already reinvented themselves with a platform-based approach to benefit from this technology. By building from a proven software and hardware platform, test managers can reap dividends of productivity today while preparing their organizations to thrive tomorrow.

What is the IoT anyway? Usually it refers to systems formerly treated as isolated entities, but now are treated as sources of relevant data. In the consumer space, smart appliances, thermostats, and power meters come to mind. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is where test managers make a difference; tools used in the IIoT range from test and measurement instruments such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, and function generators to fully integrated smart testers.

The secret sauce that takes these tools from mere isolated things to IIoT-enabled devices is a combination of technologies: device-to-device communication, automated analytics and scalable systems.

Fortunately for test and measurement, this is not uncharted territory. These are technologies that industry leaders have implemented through software platforms for more than a decade.

Creating a Device-to-Device Communication Network

At its release in 2006, National Instruments’ (NI) LabVIEW 8.20 software was notable for first including a Web server for building test and measurement systems. Why would someone automating data acquisition need a Web server? For automated test developers at Microsoft working on testing Xbox 360 controllers, this technology presented an opportunity for unprecedented device-to-device communication. Combined with GPIB, serial and other network communication protocols such as TCP/IP, a Web server provided a way for test systems to communicate results to each other and back to a central archive.

Microsoft created a network of testers to continuously improve functional test.

When developing new functional tests for the Xbox 360 controllers, developers found that optimizing as many parallel tests as possible in a limited production cycle time was a significant challenge. Microsoft realized that knowing the status of all of its testers and viewing a central repository of all test data presented an operational advantage to optimize these tests and produce less expensive, more reliable devices.

Microsoft is not alone in this pursuit; test organizations around the world are building software infrastructure to remotely monitor, analyze and even control their production test systems.

Deriving Value from Test Data through Automated Analytics

Similar to how infants babble to each other, for a long time test devices have muttered unintelligible command line statuses through serial ports. Device-to-device communication is truly valuable when meaningful insights can be derived from the data through automated analytics. This is an area where the test industry has long been ahead of other industries.

For aerospace giant Raytheon Missile Systems, wide varieties of analog data are logged to a central repository of binary files tagged with relevant metadata to allow the data to be analyzed. Automated analysis of this data is conducted in tools like LabVIEW and NI DIAdem to gain a high-level view of performance and immediately report results back to operators and managers. Without a software platform to manage this data and generate useful insights, it is common for test organizations to be overwhelmed by the substantial amounts of data they collect and unable to derive value from it. In Raytheon’s case, however, the insights gave the company the ability to reduce the time required for each test cycle by half.

In addition to centralized analysis on the server, for distributed test systems, automated analysis on the node can provide significant operational advantages. Although raw analog data may overwhelm a network, a FPGA (field programming gate array) or CPU processing on the node can synthesize data into digestible pieces such as average values that can be more succinctly communicated over the network to other stakeholders. Equipped with a high-level graphical programming approach called the LabVIEW reconfigurable I/O (RIO) architecture, test engineers can take advantage of user-programmable FPGAs and embedded controllers to perform distributed analytics or make instant decisions at the node without needing to send data back to a central server.

Planning for Changing Requirements with Scalable Hardware Systems

In addition to device-to-device communication and automated analysis implemented in software, another crucial aspect of IIoT systems already found in today’s test and measurement applications is scalable hardware systems. For wireless telecom leader Qualcomm, disparate, lengthy measurements on traditional box instruments were driving up the cost of measurement in an extremely competitive and cost-sensitive industry.

Figure 2. Scalable hardware systems such as NI PXI are the building blocks of the IIoT.

By upgrading from RF signal generators and analyzers to NI’s modular, PXI-based hardware platform, Qualcomm saved significant rack space and lowered the cost of test. More importantly, by taking advantage of the user-programmable FPGA hardware on NI’s vector signal transceiver, Qualcomm decreased test time by a factor of 200.

Building on a flexible hardware platform that uses the NI PXI technology turns future requirements from a threat of obsolescence to an opportunity to upgrade. Instead of replacing an entire box instrument for a new measurement specification, a new PXI module can be incorporated into the existing test system. Or if the processing power for a complex RF measurement is inadequate, the PXI controller can be replaced with the new NI PXIe-8880, which features an industry-leading eight-core Intel Xeon processor. This flexibility opens up test systems to exciting new technology enablers, such as silicon advances, user-programmable FPGAs, and timing and synchronization advances.

IIoT systems are constantly evolving to include more and more nodes with varying I/O requirements. To meet these challenges, a software platform must support flexible, modular hardware solutions.

Discovering the Business Opportunity of the IIoT

Each of these successful companies used a proven software and hardware platform to implement elements of the IIoT.

Microsoft built a networked software infrastructure to connect their testers and gained insights to double test throughput per station.

Raytheon implemented automated analysis of data to reduce test cycle times by 95%.

Qualcomm radically redefined their definition of test coverage through a modular, software-designed instrument approach.

Although the IIoT has already manifested itself in test and measurement over the last decade through software platforms like LabVIEW, today’s test managers are presented with significant new opportunities to make their test systems smarter. Web, cloud and mobile technology are redefining the landscape for how humans can interact with machines and machines with each other. For the first time, fully automated end-to-end testing, analysis and adaptation are real, tangible possibilities.

For some test managers and organizations, there may not be a choice. As test budgets are further squeezed, requirements continue to change rapidly and time-to-market pressures increase, piecemeal hardware systems with software built from scratch will become increasingly untenable.

Building the IIoT With a Software Platform for Test and Measurement

LabVIEW and NI TestStand deliver the software platform needed for test engineers to use scalable test hardware such as NI’s PXI hardware platform to achieve device-to-device communication and automated analysis. With a proven approach for defining acquisition, synchronization, processing and analysis through high-level graphical programming, NI developed LabVIEW 2015 to help engineers write code faster. With NI’s software portfolio, test engineers can spend more time focusing on the test challenges at hand without getting caught up in the low-level details.

Figure 3. LabVIEW 2015 is a software platform to build IIoT applications for test and measurement.

This empowers developers to build a robust IIoT solution while avoiding the risk of building a software solution from the ground up. LabVIEW facilitates device-to-device communication through countless methods such as PXI chassis backplane communication buses, embedded network protocol support and HTTP web methods. LabVIEW and TestStand facilitate automated analysis wherever it needs to happen — on the instrument, on the tester, or on the data server. Innovative technologies like NI Cloud Dashboard further extend test devices to be able to seamlessly upload streams of test data to the cloud where they can be accessible from any device with an Internet connection.

This software platform puts control into the hands of test engineers, while empowering them to use hardware with industry-leading commercial technology like NI’s new eight-core PXI controller or high-voltage system management unit (SMU).

While the IoT receives a lot of attention from the technology community, it presents test organizations with real opportunity. Savvy test managers armed with software that provides integrated device communication and automated analysis can discover areas for rapid improvement and radical cost savings.

When this software is combined with a scalable modular hardware platform, this is a chance for organizations to quickly capitalize on the latest commercial technology without being limited by rigid fixed functionality instruments.

Returning to the original question, is the IIoT a disruptive new opportunity or just validation of proven technologies in the test and measurement industry? The answer is up to each test manager to decide. What is certain is that the IIoT will give rise to smarter test systems that will further redefine test and measurement in the decades ahead.