Working with Engineers

Spring 2017 ISOBUS Plugfest Preview

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Once again, another ISOBUS Plugfest is upon us. On May 9th, dozens of Ag electronics engineers from around the globe will descend upon the Embassy Suites in Lincoln, NE, for three days of testing. ISOBUS exists to provide a standardized method of communicating between Ag vehicles and Ag implements, and Plugfest exists to do a quick spot-check on different types of equipment in one location. I strongly recommend attending a Plugfest for anyone involved in engineering networked electronics for heavy equipment, especially if that equipment supports third-party additions.

Make Plans to Join Us at AMC 2017

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The 2017 AMC Engineering Conference is just around the corner, but there’s plenty of time to make plans to attend. This year’s event will once again be held in downtown Waterloo, Iowa at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center starting on Tuesday, April 25th through Thursday, April 27th. The 31st annual AMC Engineering Conference provides a forum for agricultural & off-highway engineers to come together to celebrate and grow engineering skills in the Midwest.

Case Study: Building a Test System to Determine Root Cause of Field Failures

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A customer has been receiving field failures and the root cause has been difficult to determine. They have ideas of what may be causing these failures and need a test system that can simulate the various conditions and monitor the Device Under Test (DUT) to assist in determining the root cause. The customer turned to DISTek to provide a bench-top setup that will control the DUT and measure multiple in-circuit test points for events that may be damaging field effect transistors (FET) along with recording FET case temperatures. Custom events have been defined by the customer and will trigger the system to capture pre and post-trigger data. The test system should also provide various loads to the output of the DUT.

Part 2: Cognex LCD Vehicle Display Tester

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Welcome back to the blog! Today, I will be talking about how to operate a Cognex smart camera via a LabVIEW program. The way I will be communicating with the camera is via TCP/IP. There are other potential ways to communicate with the camera from LabVIEW, but this was determined to be the best way, giving us the most control over the camera. I will walk through some basic terminology that is necessary to discuss building a Cognex vision test. Then, I will create and set up a vision test and finally, I will briefly describe how to program LabVIEW to send/receive information to the camera and to trigger an image acquisition.

Rubik’s Cube Secret: Algorithms Work

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Anyone who stops by my office will notice that I have many puzzles laying around my desk. There are blocks, rings, metal puzzles, wood puzzles, and my favorite, Rubik’s cubes of all sizes. I really enjoy the Rubik’s cube and it is often regarded as something only a few people are able to solve. To learn to solve this puzzle requires many hours of practice to reliably solve it every time.

Part 1: Cognex LCD Vehicle Display Tester

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As LCD vehicle displays have become more prevalent and versatile in both on- and off-highway, the time it takes to ensure proper display functionality after a software release has increased dramatically. It is not uncommon for displays to have 15, 20, or even 30 different screens, each of which having multiple sub-selections available. If you take into consideration different supported languages, the scope of the test grows dramatically. DISTek, as a company, is always attempting to define the future needs of customers in the off-highway industry, of which vehicle display testers are one of those needs.

NI Week 2016: LabVIEW Champions Track

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Ni Week

The 22nd Annual NI Week is slated to begin in Austin, Texas, on August 1st. NI Week provides the forum to bring together the brightest minds in engineering and science. More than 3,200 innovators representing a wide spectrum of industries, from automotive and telecommunications to robotics and energy will converge together to discover the latest technology to accelerate productivity for software-defined systems in test, measurement, and control. While DISTek regularly attends in various capacities, this year we will be making a new showing. Our very own Systems Engineer and LabVIEW expert, Ed Dickens, will be presenting on Wednesday, August 3rd from 4:45-5:45PM. His presentation is the result of National Instruments trying something new. This year, for the first time ever, there will be an advanced software topic track where all the presentation topics and content will be prepared and presented by various “LabVIEW Champions”.

Brainless LabVIEW Programming: CLA Summit 2016

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One of the presentations I attended at this years Certified LabVIEW Architects summit was given by Darren Nattinger of National Instruments. Darren is a Principal Engineer in LabVIEW R & D. One of the many things he’s responsible for is getting the Quick Drop feature added to LabVIEW. His presentation was titled, ”An End to Brainless LabVIEW Programming”.

Avoiding the Flying Platypus: CLA Summit 2016

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In March I attended the Certified LabVIEW Architects Summit (CLA) in Austin, Texas. Every year National Instruments hosts this conference where CLAs can network, discuss best practices, and share ideas. This year the theme was Continuous Improvement: Building Better LabVIEW Applications.

Starting an Engineering Career

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Ag Engineering Students

After graduating in December of 2013 from Iowa State with a degree in Electrical Engineering, I set out on the quest for my first job. The search began shortly after graduation in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. I soon found that Silicon Valley has a very competitive job market with little room for the new guy. After 6 months of searching, I brought my search back to the Midwest and contacted Jeff Sandvold who I had talked with at the Iowa State career fairs. After a phone conversation and a very long skype interview with everyone at the Cedar Falls office, I found myself making the 2000 mile journey across the country to start my first job here at DISTek.

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