CAS Draws a Crowd at 9th Annual Automotive Testing Expo 2011

North America’s Only Automotive Test, Evaluation and Quality Engineering Tradeshow

CAS DataLoggers has returned from exhibiting at the 9th Annual Automotive Testing Expo 2011 held late October at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan. CAS has been a long-running exhibitor since 2004, and this year, staff and products were on hand meeting the large demand for sophisticated yet cost-effective solutions for attendees’ automotive applications. With the ever-increasing emphasis on electric vehicle development and alternative energy sources, the state of the art has required equally cutting-edge technologies. This year’s show was even more extensive, featuring more exhibitors and more new testing technologies designed for the automotive industry, with a large number of showgoers stopping by the CAS booth to speak with CAS Engineering Manager Terry Nagy and Data Acquisition Product Manager Bing Brown about the latest datalogging products.

This year CAS came well-prepared for the rush of attendees by offering the latest technologies for the full automotive production process. Particularly large interest was shown for the Influx Rebel xt CAN-based vehicle data logger, a high-speed vehicle data logger capable of collecting a wide range of signals including OBD, CAN, analog, and GPS. This unique low-cost solution offered customers flexible and powerful data logging along with user-friendly software supporting industry standard protocols to allow users to start recording data in minutes. The Rebel xt was designed to collect real-time data from several sources including temperature, RPM, brake and throttle settings, latitude, longitude, speed, etc. for extended periods without requiring any user interaction. With free analysis software and remote data accessibility, the Rebel xt vehicle data logger presented the ideal solution for attendees’ vehicle and engine monitoring applications, including vehicle field tests, engineering data acquisition, and CAN bus data recording. Throughout the show, the Rebel xt drew quite an audience looking for a solution allowing them to retrieve data in real-time from their vehicles in the field. Terry Nagy, Engineering Manager at CAS, explained their enthusiasm: “One thing that really impressed our visitors was that the Rebel vehicle logger formed an integrated package with the remote link via GPRS right in the logger.” There were also attention-grabbing demos of the Influx SureFleet real-time monitoring software for the Rebel xt, which automatically transfers data sent to servers. Influx CEO Lance Keen used SureFleet to show the position of vehicles as far away as Southern California, along with data on all of their parameters. Interested groups included engineering development groups testing out new controllers or collecting data for new vehicles undergoing field testing.

CAS also arrived with a strong selection of sophisticated data acquisition solutions from ADwin, which supported parallel, individually-controlled, real-time processes while running independently of a PC's

operating system. ADwin systems provided deterministic operation with response times of 1 usecond or less and featured tightly coupled analog and digital inputs along with counters that provide extremely low latency operation. CAS also showcased data acquisition devices from Delphin Technologies designed to solve a variety of measurement and control problems in industrial applications such as product development, test engineering and process technology and monitoring. The CAS team ran a vibration demo where a disk was spun and the Delphin system constantly measured its vibration and extracted the data. These systems featured different analog and digital input and output modules that could be used with a wide range of signal types including voltage, 4-20 mA current, thermocouples, RTD, and resistance. Furthermore, powerful alarm and programming capabilities allowed these instruments to process measurements and initiate actions on their own. In particular, the Delphin LogMessage systems generated lots of interest; these high-speed devices sampled data into the 600-1200 hertz range and appealed to many applications involving brake testing, thermal measurement, suspension, force, and vibration. Bing Brown, Data Acquisition Product Manager for CAS DataLoggers, noted a high level of interest in ADwin and Delphin systems from several groups, stating that “People took notice when we presented our high-speed ADwin and Delphin systems. I discussed so many projects with visitors across so many fields…again and again I was able to tell them that CAS has everything they need for their automotive applications.”

Also on display was the Squirrel2020 WiFi portable wireless datalogger from Grant Instruments, a handheld data logger combining high performance and universal inputs with the simplicity of Wi-Fi networking, all in a compact and easy-to-use instrument. This wireless 8/16 Channel data logger featured 100Hz sampling at a high precision, 24-bit analog to digital converters, removable memory and Wi-Fi wireless Ethernet networking, and was specifically developed for temperature measurement in industrial testing and quality assurance applications. The new logger appealed to attendees conducting underhood temperature measurements, climate control systems verification, and other thermal-based vehicle applications. Together with its comprehensive SquirrelView suite of software, the SQ2020 provided customers with standalone data acquisition, simple Wi-Fi Ethernet networking, real-time metering and data analysis straight out of the box.