NI boosts PXI with controllers, chassis, and I/O

PXI continues to grow with an 18-slot chassis, system controllers, multifunction DAQ, and an oscilloscope.

NI’s line of PXI-based test instrumentation has received a significant boost. Nearing 30 years old, PXI has become the standard for modular instrumentation in automated test for it boasts a thriving multi-vendor ecosystem. PXI originator NI has added an 18-slot chassis, two embedded controllers, an two multifunction data-acquisition (DAQ) modules and an oscilloscope to its line.

The NI-PXIe 1081 chassis contains 17 hybrid PXI/PXIe slots and a single PXIe-only slot. Having hybrid slots that let you insert everything from the latest PXIe instruments back to legacy PXI instrument cards. Thus, you can keep using cards you have from legacy test systems. A single PXIe slot supports a system-controller module, which can be an embedded controller to an interface card to a host computer. The chassis features 58 W of cooling capacity per slot. Data-transfer rates reach 2 GB/sec.

Two new PXIe embedded system controllers differ in their CPUs. The PXIe-8842 contains a 6-core Intel Core i5 processor while the PXIe-8862 contains an 8-core Intel Core i7 processor. Both controllers have four USB 2.0, two USB 3 Super-Speed, one or two DisplayPort, two USB-C, two 2.5 G Ethernet, and a 9-pin GPIO port. A GPIB is optional for applications requiring box instruments. You can order then with pre-installed Windows 10, Windows 11, or Linux operating systems.

The PXIe-6381 and PXIe-6383 Multifunction DAQ modules bring 18-bit analog input and add analog output, digital I/O, and counter/timers to a PXI-based system. The difference between the two modules comes in the number of channels: analog input (16/32 single ended or 8/16 differential), analog output (2/4), and digital I/O (24/48).

When you need higher-speed signal capture, NI offers the PXIe-5108, a 14-bit, 100 MHz digital oscilloscope. Variants include four or eight channels with 512 MB of acquisition memory and 250 MSa/sec digitizing rate.