Applications Of Virtual Instrument Technology On The UPS PCB Automated Test System

Virtual Instrument Technology has a rapid development. It supports software development in a hardware-independent Environment. It can organize hardware modules according to the different measured objects, or test procedures. It's more convenient, flexible and advanced than the test system based on traditional instrument. The developments of the Virtual Instruments trend to have Plug-in, bus topology and Networking functions. Agilent VEE Pro has integrated drivers based on standard interfaces, massive amount of modulars of office and network components. It introduces procedure-oriented CGI programming interface, which makes it top of Virtual Instrument Development Software.What the author designed is an Automated Test System that tests UPS(Uninterruptible Power Supply) PCBs based on Virtual Instrument Technology and Agilent VEE Pro environment. Since PCBs have various of types and testing items, testing workers need to manual operate multiple machines, and record a large number of test data in traditional manual test. Automated Test System can continuous repeatedly testing according to the preset test project, and record test data. It's can solve the problems suffered in the manual operations efficiently and exactly in a simply way and provides a fully functional and simple-operation test platform.This paper has expatiated the procedure of development of Automated Test System. It begins with the principles and the methodologies of the UPS PCB Automated Test System based on Virtual Instrument Technology and provides the feasibilities of switching using PIC16F877A chipset. Then it introduces the hardware design of a needle plate box and a controller box and gives the functional introductions of hardware devices. After that, it presents the design and implements of the software using VEE Pro platform, describes the programs of the controller box and key modulars. Finally the experiences of software testing and the hardware-software associated testing are concerned as well as the further works of the whole system. The aim of this paper is to develop the accurate, efficient and reliable Automated Test System, which can provide reference for the development of other Automated Test System on VEE Pro.