Smart sensors feature standardised TEDS

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jul 2, 2004

Honeywell smart sensor products and National Instruments (NI) LabView and data acquisition products now operate on a common platform compatible with IEEE1451.4, the TEDS standard.

Honeywell smart sensor products and National Instruments (NI) LabView and data acquisition products now operate on a common platform compatible with IEEE1451.4, the TEDS standard recently released in final form.

Along with other major sensor manufacturers, Honeywell helped develop the common platform, called Sensors Plug and Play, by using NI LabView graphical programming software to program its sensors.

As a result, test and measurement customers can now take advantage of seamless interoperability between Honeywell Sensotec smart sensors and signal conditioners and NI data acquisition hardware and software.

A smart TEDS sensor contains an integrated EEPROM chip which carries scaling, calibration and user information, facilitating digital interrogation of the sensor's configuration data.

The customer's data acquisition system reads both the smart TEDS sensor analogue signal as well as the EEPROM configuration information.

By automating test and measurement system setup through a common TEDS platform, engineers and scientists can cut set-up time and costs - while improving reliability - by eliminating manual data entry.

"We know from customer feedback that system setup can comprise 25% of overall measurement cost - the second highest cost after the purchase price of hardware and software", said Brian Betts, NI Data Acquisition Product Manager.

"The combined offering of Sensors Plug and Play products from National Instruments and virtually all of the Sensotec sensors from Honeywell significantly reduces setup time, which saves our customers money by helping them get data faster".

"The end result is a more affordable and accurate measurement system".

Martin Armson, Director of Marketing and International Sales for Honeywell Sensotec sensors, notes that smart sensor technology based on the Sensors Plug and Play platform does much more in addition to improving accuracy and productivity.

"This technology also eases the logistics of managing test and measurement systems that can comprise hundreds or even thousand of sensors", Armson said.

"The automatic interrogation feature reduces 'cabling and labeling' problems and facilitates inventorying and control of expensive sensors".

The end result, according to Armson: "You can spend much more time refining your measurement system, and much less time looking for your sensors".

Armson noted that customers with legacy sensors that lack TEDS EEPROM chips can still take advantage of the new technology.

"We've got a kit that they can use to retrofit any of our sensors by burning an EEPROM and mounting it in the connector, the sensor itself, or a special adaptor attached to the sensor cable".

Another option for PC-enabled customers is Virtual TEDS, a library housed at NI's website that offers sensor data in the standard TEDS format for direct download to customers' data acquisition and signal conditioning systems.

"At the very least", Armson said, "customers can take advantage of the 'paperless calibration' part of plug and play by accessing calibration data from their manufacturer's website".

He noted that Honeywell already has online calibration data available for all of its Sensotec sensors.

Honeywell was particularly well placed to collaborate with NI on the common TEDS platform.

For more than eight years, the company had supplied plug-and-play implementations based on the TEDS principle through its SIG CAL technology.

"As the issue date for IEEE1451.4 approached", noted Ken Rastatter, Senior Design Engineer, "we simply changed our proprietary protocol to match the one dictated by the standard".

"And working with National Instruments to create a common platform based on LabView was a natural".