Project Introduction: LED flashlights are gaining popularity in the industrial field, not only do they save energy, but they are also lighter and cheaper than their traditional counterparts. One of our clients is a major manufacturer of automotive repair tools, including LED flashlights, and they were looking to reduce the battery requirements in their flashlights down to a one coin cell battery. Thus, they turned to Advantech for the tools they needed to design a more efficient rise-voltage circuit for driving the LED.

System Requirements: The manufacturers outsourcing team wanted to leverage Advantech's industrial-grade USB DAQ module to verify their thermo specifications, which was difficult to gauge due to the interference from the voltage circuits inside the flashlight.

To make sure quality is under control, they were looking for products that:

• Provide full-speed and high-speed data transmission rates
• Provide firm mounting and installation kids
• Provide firm cable connections
• Provide ready to use utilities for data logging

Project Implementation:

USB-4718: 8 Channel Thermocouple Input USB Module

System Description: USB-4718 was used to connect with thermocouple sensors, and then transfer data to the desktop's HDD. The WaveScan utility inside the desktop is free, providing data logging, real-time waveform and historical trend functions. All the signals can be displayed on the screen in real-time, also providing off-line analysis of the data or transfer the data into Excel format for further data analysis at a later time.

Conclusion: After implementing Advantech products, the client not only saved cabling and installation efforts, they also saved 70% on the test station's cost. Moreover, this test tool can be used in the central or subcontractor's office, providing increased flexibility for the engineers.