New high-performance NI serial interfaces deliver flexible baud rates

JUNE 2--National Instruments (NI; Austin; TX; www.ni.com) has announced eight RS-232/485 serial interfaces that deliver features such as flexible baud rates up to 1 Mbit/s and universal PCI, hyperthreading, and multiprocessor support. The NI 843x family of serial boards, combined with LabVIEW 7.1 I/O Assistant, offer increased productivity for serial applications such as machine control, manufacturing test, and traditional instrument control.

The boards deliver flexible baud rate capabilities that engineers can use to communicate with devices that operate with nonstandard baud rates ranging from 57 bits/s to 1 Mbit/s. The boards also work with devices such as cell phones that require communication using both standard and nonstandard baud rates.

With multiprocessor and hyperthreading support, engineers also can take advantage of the latest PC technology. The driver software included with the boards offers better resource allocation and universal PCI support for 3.3- and 5-V I/O and DMA access for higher throughput. In addition, boards include memory-mapping features that connect to more serial devices without resource conflicts.

The boards offer overall serial programming, working with LabVIEW 7.1 Instrument I/O Assistant and the more than 3000 instrument drivers available for download at www.ni.com/idnet. Engineers can use these combined resources to make programming using serial communications faster.