The Beckhoff TwinCAT platform is a powerful alternative to LabVIEW Realtime and National Instruments hardware. With the release of a new version of MGI’s TwinCAT Strict package, now it’s trivial to set up communications between LabVIEW and TwinCAT projects.

See how we analyzed 1100 flight test maneuvers to determine if a modified helicopter tail rotor affected the engine from a vibration perspective.

MGI Solution Explorer now has several new features that make it a bit more flexible. First, you now can control how version numbers are set and it’s adjustable on a per-item basis. Second, there’s now a built-in way to set conditional disables on a per-item and -configuration basis. Third, you can now use version numbers in Run VI and Shell Command steps.

You have probably been in this situation before: you have a bunch of classes in your project with configuration data and you want to be able to edit them in the UI and store them on disk, but they don’t all have a common ancestor. Maybe some of them are Actors and others are not. The natural solution is to use interfaces, and now LabVIEW has them. This article will show how to use a “Configurable” interface that’s applicable to Actors and non-Actors, handles UI and disk, and works great with tiered configuration where parts of some classes’ configuration are stored in an abstract parent and other parts are in various children.

There are many opinions as to what is a good flight test user interface, and there is some flexibility, especially if the UI will be used in a Telemetry room where preserving night vision (dark adapted sight) is not a concern. For UIs that will be used in flight, strict adherence to aircraft display design guidance is best.

Flight test aircraft can generate massive amounts of data, especially when audio and video streams are added to the acquisition system. Some data storage file types can be very inefficient. Consideration of the correct file type and correct storage data types is necessary to ensure that you can efficiently store and access your data.

The data processing needs of any flight test organization are fairly similar. Analog and Digital data will need to be acquired. Calibrations will be needed. Digital data must be decoded. Derived Parameters will need to be calculated. At least some level of digital filtering will likely be needed. Limit checking will be needed. Plots will have to be made by the hundreds. Batch processing will be needed. Data will have to be reviewed quickly, prior to the next flight during envelope expansion.

Good software is expensive, but bad software is far more expensive.

This is the first of a multi-part series on the application of LabVIEW in a Flight Test environment.

Breaking News! The MGI Solution Explorer is now available as a standard option with LabVIEW!