Dewesoft X3 SP5 Released

Sound intensity application

Probably the most important out of all of Dewesoft’s new functionalities is the sound intensity module, as it opens up a brand new application field for Dewesoft. The sound intensity module offers a complete measurement solution, enabling customers to use it for precise noise source location or sound power calculations, without the need for a special environment, such as reverberation rooms or anechoic chambers. 

Because of the module’s importance, it is featured in a dedicated section of the spotlight, accessible here.

Map visual control

The brand new map visual control is the perfect solution for vehicle testing visualization. With support for all standard map tile services and an out-of-the-box "Open street map" layer (image below), there is no longer a need for manual image alignment, meaning that users can quickly and easily achieve sophisticated imaging results.

A major focal point of development has been to make the map usable offline, as measurement systems in the field often lack internet connectivity. If you are performing a measurement where an internet connection is not possible or not allowed, you can pre-download a certain region with a user-defined level of detail, so that the map can correctly display tile data even when your system becomes offline. On the contrary, when the system is online and you scroll the map, all layers are automatically downloaded so that they can load faster next time.

Both TMS (Tile Map Service) and WMS (Web Map Service) protocols are supported, which means that you can connect to most free or commercial map tile servers. However please keep in mind that tile server providers often require a license for downloading map tiles. 

The map supports multiple layers, so in case you have access to high-resolution aerial images of your area of interest, you can show them as an additional layer, which will provide an even more detailed view. Geo-referenced images are automatically aligned with other layers, which removes any errors that would normally arise from manual alignment.

Layers can also be combined using custom transparency levels, allowing you to perfectly visualize the data, depending on your needs and preferences. For example, you can add the Open street map layer on top of satellite images to add road and street names.

Another extremely useful feature that the map offers is trace coloring. You can for example color the path of a vehicle using velocity or acceleration data, giving you a clearer picture and a better understanding of what took place during the measurement. For even more customization you can select one of the standard heat map color palettes like jet, spring, cool, hot, etc. The visual control is also not limited to just one channel source, as multiple objects/vehicles can be added so that you can see the correlation between them. Each object can have its own coloring definition.

All in all, the map visual control has been developed with the intention of seamlessly performing difficult graphical computation and alignment tasks so that users can effortlessly visualize their data and focus on analyzing it instead.

Modal test application

Even though the modal test module has already been available in Dewesoft for quite some time, it has received a significant overhaul in X3 SP5. The update addresses a lot of the customer requests that we’ve received, expands the feature range of the module and makes it even easier to use. 

The new version allows users to add multiple excitation and response channels simultaneously. Using this option you can easily perform a modal test in all three directions in the same file. When having closely spaced resonant frequencies, customers can use this functionality as a multiple reference method to accurately determine the resonances. The autofill option allows you to more easily and quickly add a large number of excitation and response channels. With a graphical representation of weighting windows for the excitation and response signals, it is easier to set the windows according to your application. In addition to the H1 estimator, we’ve also added the H2 estimator and PSD calculations.

To support all added functions in the setup, the visual control “FRF geometry” also needed an upgrade. Now you can animate the structure in all three directions, manually select excitation and response points, animate complex, real or imaginary data… During the measurement, the identification of response and excitation points is also much easier due to the different colors of the points. An example of the reworked visual control can be seen in the picture below.

Support for vector CAN FD devices

In SP5, Dewesoft has added support for CAN FD. As Dewesoft devices aren’t ready for reading the CAN FD protocol yet, users are able to do so with several supported Vector cards*, which are used by Dewesoft to acquire the messages, followed by a decoding process in the software. Apart from reading, the combination of Dewesoft X3 and Vector acquisition cards can also be used to transmit CAN FD messages. Acquiring CAN FD data is by no means a standalone application, as the messages can, of course, be used with pretty much any other data source such as analog, digital, video, GPS…

The main advantage of CAN FD compared to the regular CAN protocol is that a CAN FD frame can hold up to 64 bytes of data, while a regular CAN frame can only hold 8 bytes, allowing more data to be transferred over the same network. The bus speed at 8 Mbit/s is much faster compared to the standard CAN with a maximum of 1 Mbit/s.

In the message settings dialogue, the DLC can be set up to 64 instead of 8 with CAN. This means that the total length of the message can be up to 512 bits.

Users will be happy to know that the interface is exactly the same and shared with CAN, meaning that whoever knows how to use CAN in Dewesoft, also knows how to set up CAN FD, which is enabled with a click of a button.

DBC import/export is supported with CAN FD which makes setting up new channel lists easy and fast. 

*The following Vector hardware is currently supported in Dewesoft and can be used for CAN FD: VN1610, VN1611, VN1630, VN1640, VN7600, VN7610. The first Dewesoft device supporting CAN FD will the Krypton 1xCAN, scheduled to come out in 2019.

Cursor module

The newly released Dewesoft version also features a brand new module called “Cursor”, available to all users. The cursor module expands the functionality of the existing “Latch value math” by allowing users to interactively search for level crossings in analysis, as well as find local/global minimums or maximums of channels. These values are marked on the Recorder and XY Recorder visual controls with specially labeled and colored cursors, visible in the image below.

The purpose of the functionality is to enable you to easily find events within a data file and extract values from other channels at that same time. When searching for a level crossing, Dewesoft will linearly interpolate between the two closest sample points, meaning that the extracted values will have higher precision than just by taking the nearest synchronous or asynchronous sample. Users are also able to define “Cursor pairs”, in which case Dewesoft will automatically calculate the delta values between all input channels as well as the time difference between the two events. If the data file in question contains multiple instances of the same event then users can move the cursor between those events using the "Next prev button", searching for new events in either the left or right direction.

Additional information about the module and its capabilities is available in Dewesoft’s manual.

Export to ASAM MDF

A highly requested feature in Dewesoft’s automotive sector has been the ability to export data to the ASAM MDF format. While Dewesoft already has an extensive list of supported export types, MDF is one of the formats that users have missed in the past. With X3 SP5, that is no longer the case, as the format is now officially available in Dewesoft.

Generally speaking, ASAM MDF is a file format supported by the Association for Standardization of Automation and Measuring Systems, or ASAM for short. The organization is one of the leaders in the field of standardization and its main focus is the automotive and measurement industry. MDF or Measurement Data Format is a binary file format that stores recorded data for post-measurement processing. Dewesoft’s MDF export is written according to version 4 of the standard defined by ASAM, therefore the files created using the export will receive the mf4 suffix.

The export is available as an extension and can be acquired either by using the latest software installer or by downloading the extension directly from our downloads section and adding it to X3 SP5 or any newer Dewesoft version. As is the case with any other supported format, the MDF export can be found in the “Export file type list”, marked in the picture above.

Other features and improvements

Convenience/usability

• Added a prompt for saving unsaved setup file changes

• New setup button in the channel selector in analyse mode for editing mathematic channels within the review tab

• Next/prev button functionality on the Input control display

• Apply action can now also copy the colors of channels

• Added multiple options for handling sample rate divided channels when changing the global acquisition rate

• Exact frequency math now shows the unit of the selected channel's treshold
  Added the acqtime function to the formula, which returns the elapsed time since the start of acquistion

• File size is available as a system monitor parameter

• Changed addons structure so every extension has a separate folder

Devices

• PWM (Pulse-width modulation) functionality for the KRYPTONi-8xDI-8xDO and KRYPTONi-16xDO

• Added signal conditioning support for the HD Sirius slices with analog outputs

• Advanced option which can disable hardware sample rate dividers for faster signal conditioning

• Newly supported devices: 

  • ECAT-GPS-JUNCTION

  • KRYPTONi 1xSTG

  • KRYPTON-1xCNT 

  • KRYPTONi-1xLV

  • R1DB

• New adapters: DSI-V-20, DSI-ODU-TH-T/J/C, DSI-ODU-5A

• New connectors: SIRIUS-HD-STGS-L2B10fs, SIRIUS-HS-STG-L2B10f

• Added 4k and 40k filter options for the Sirius line of products

TEDS

• Ability to lock amplifier, sensor and channel properties over TEDS

• Optional warning when an empty TEDS is connected

• Support for writing TEDS with USB 1-Wire writer

• Display a warning message if any changes are done and not written to TEDS upon exiting channel setup

• Warning message when the sample rate is adjusted from TEDS sensor

• Support for pausing TEDS scanning

DSA

• Order Tracking:

  • Order tracking’s FFT bandwith now takes into account the global bandwith setting

• Power Analayser:

  • Added phase information for symmetrical components

  • Added support for calculating a 3-phase system out of a 2-phase measurement

  • Added a QH_H1per calculation

  • Supported all energy calculations (positive, negative, total)

  • Added subfolders for symmetrical components