For the last two years, G Systems has sponsored Chain Reaction Robotics, a group of high school juniors and seniors in Plano, Texas, who recently completed their second year as a robotics team. In that short time they have accomplished so much through the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) competitions. I was gladly recruited by a Plano Independent School District (PISD) employee to mentor the team.
When kicking off a test cell software development project, one of the first considerations is typically, should we build or buy? Both commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and custom software have advantages and disadvantages to consider in any scenario. Most of the time, COTS software will not meet 100 percent of your requirements, but it may get you most of the way there.
If you are considering performing tests and acquiring data from a complex, large structure, like a space capsule or aircraft, then you will most likely acquire data from a high-channel count system that has hundreds or even thousands of acquisition channels. A solution designed for less than a hundred channels will not just easily scale by simply adding more channels. There are many considerations beyond just adding more channels when designing, testing, and deploying successful high-channel-count systems. Let’s look at five best practices that you will consider during the design phase of the project and take advantage of throughout the life of the test system.
Maximize Your Test System Development: Optimize Your Performance, Reliability and Usability by Starting with Good Requirements
Whether you are developing your own system or have decided to outsource your test system design, your requirements are crucial to the outcome of your system. Our goal is to get you thinking at a high level about what to consider when communicating your requirements.
After reading through Ralph Hutson’s blog about whether to make or buy your next test system, you may have decided you want to hire G Systems to design and build your test system. To take that step, you need to provide the test requirements; however, you may not be familiar with how to write requirements. It's likely that you typically define the test requirements in-house as you design your test system. So, what should you consider when writing your requirements?
