September 27, 2011 – 8:45 am
As many of you know there are features in TILE! that are not documented at all in the manual. I am trying to fix that since we have version 5 out. One of the actions that I would appreciate some information on is the CS103/4/5. If any of you have a profile or any experience with it, please send me that information at tilesupport@ets-lindgren.com. Thanks!
September 1, 2011 – 8:04 am
The long awaited TILE! 5 is now available from ETS-Lindgren. This version is compatible with Windows 7 and adds I/O ports for USB, Ethernet and PXI.
Some of the features that TILE! users have asked for are included such as cut and paste and improved graph / table features. The cut and paste function will allow users to copy and paste sections of a flowchart. You can even cut from one open flowchart to another open flowchart. There is also an ‘undo’ button that will come into play for any novice or experienced user.
We have a new updated look with a palette that has been re-designed to reflect a premium software package. Older profiles can be imported as always but the icons will reflect the new palette.
Other features:
- Move calculations up and down in the Math action to tweak the sequence
- Move table and graph data elements without having to delete and re-enter them
- Graphs can start and stop at any frequency in the log format (previous versions were locked to decades)
- Changing an element name in the Data section will also change it in any referenced equation
- Right clicks are available to enable the action processes
- Double click in the instruments or data sections to add a new entry
- Graphs attributes can be changed so that they will export with the same ‘look’ that is seen on high or low resolution monitors
- Enhanced password options to lock edit actions but will allow the profile to run
- Drivers for the new Agilent line of EMC receiver/SA’s as well as the FFT functions on the R&S ESU.
- Added some new math functions
We have developed a set of simulated instruments that will help us run your profile without having to have the actual instruments. This simulator will be available to you as well.
Added USB key security so that we can more freely distribute the code and allow it to run for profile development but will not execute instrument commands without the key.
Ask your ETS-Lindgren sales representative or contact us at tilesupport@ets-lindgren.com to get more information and get your keys.
This is some great information to those of you that are using the 8566 with a Pre-selector. This was contributed by Jason Anderson. . You always set the RFPS and the SA to the same address. For example, “18” is pretty popular on the SA. So on the RFPS set the dip switches to match that address. The address chosen for the SA should always be even; the RFPS address will be the next odd address, in this case “19”. Then RFPS and SA are connected via GPIB on the private bus; nothing else should exist on that bus. The SA and RFPS are then commanded by the GPIB from the master over the public interface on the RFPS. You address the SA by using the assigned address and the RFPS by using the next odd address. For example, if the SA is 18 and the RFPS has its dip switches set to 18, you would communicate with the master device by addressing communication to address 18 for the analyzer and address 19 for the RFPS.
February 4, 2011 – 11:48 am
The TILE! support team was super busy in 2010. Our goal was to release a new version that would take advantage of the latest software tools so we can enhance our support and development. We announced at the TILE! Users Group meeting at the IEEE show that we were going to call it TILE! 4.5. We also thought that that would be released soon after the meeting. However at this same time we were also supporting the development of ETS-Lindgren’s Systems business. The systems we were working on at the time were cell phone centric and required a lot of interaction with the very complex call boxes that are required to make the calls and monitor the performance of the phones during all phases of emissions and immunity tests. This dedicated support allowed our developers to dive deeper than ever into the code and correct and add features for that system. We realized after the show that we do not want to release this version to our TILE! base, so we are taking the good parts from that build and removing the cell phone centric parts. This is not a trivial task however we are still developing the version we will call TILE! 5.
I will be writing another article soon that will discuss the features of TILE! 5.
February 4, 2011 – 11:33 am
Since we deal with multiple email servers between ETS-L and customers, we have found that it is safest to send all files zipped. We usually do not have a problem with profiles, but drivers are actually dll’s that are stripped out of almost all correspondence.
February 4, 2011 – 11:29 am
I never understood why the first offset setting in the immunity actions would not work as I thought they should. Barry Hackworth explained the actual function to me.
Turns out this offset will look at the value in the Amp Calibration tab. If the amp has 50db of gain and you want to start at an output power of odBm, then you must use this offset to change the first level by -50dB. If you want it to start 10dB lower, then you would enter -60 in the first offset.
September 9, 2010 – 7:36 am
You can easily copy a table to Excel by doing a copy / paste function. It will be nicely formatted when you open the spreadsheet. Also if you go to the Page Defaults tab on the Table Setup (double click anywhere on the table) you will see a selection to ‘Use text for Frequency on Copy/Past. This will allow the proper scientific notation (k,M,GHz) to be applied when you look at it in Excel. You can also set the default xHz there.
To make sure that your data will be calculated correctly against a log limit line, make sure that you select ‘Continuous (Log)’ on the limit line.
To allow the proper start and stop frequencies to be shown in the log graph, go to the FTP site, /Tile4/actions tab and download the file called wct32fr3d.dll and replace the one that is in your tile4 or tile41 directory.
January 19, 2010 – 2:36 pm
For most of 2009 the TILE! support team has been taking part in a development project that will improve some of the usability of the software. Most of these enhancements will be in the immunity area. I will save the details for when we get closer to releasing it. Again we have brought the core of the software up to date so that we can take advantage of more third party plug-ins if we want to.
This release will most likely be version 4.5. You will be able to import profiles from v4.0 and 4.1 but you will have some more settings to consider in some of the actions. If you leave it alone you will most likely get the correct results, but to take advantage of new features you may want to re-configure some of the actions.
We are still using drivers built in C++, not LabView. However, if we find it advantageous to do that we can. As most of you know, the driver is mostly a list of commands. If an action wants a device to do something like change the center frequency, it will make a call for that change along with the value (frequency). Since TILE! supports so many devices this simple call can be complicated. To simplify it, TILE! combines action requests with known drivers responses. So if you want to change the center frequency the action and driver must be able to speak the same language. LabView drivers only know the command set that the device owners gave it. Therefore, TILE! would still have to have a translator to talk to that driver. So for now we think we can do what is needed with the current methodology. That said, we are still going to improve the process for altering instrument behavior based on customer requests.
Dr. Gemei Yang, our senior software engineer has submitted a paper to the IEEE EMC committee that describes an evolutionary concept for EMC test software that describes where we expect to be in the next iteration of the software. I will post a link when that paper is published.
Once my software engineers read this they may want to contribute to this post to point out my misunderstandings, so if there are no posts from them then I guess I got it right!
I will post more information in 2010 on our progress. Meanwhile please post comments here or use the support link at the top of the page to communicate with us.
Happy New Year 2010!
Joe Tannehill
