New-Tech Europe | April 2016 | Digital edition

more in-depth answers quickly and without compromising measurement integrity. Fortunately, instrument vendors are coming to understand that helping their customers do their jobs with greater confidence is a prerequisite to creating successful products. To learn more about how new interface designs are redefining how users of all levels of experience interact with their instruments, visit touchtestinvent.com. Biographical Note Jerry Janesch is a senior market development manager at Keithley Instruments, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, which is part of the Tektronix test and measurement portfolio. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Fenn College of Engineering and a master’s of business administration from John Carroll University. He has been with Keithley since 2000.

Figure 4. The latest benchtop instruments combine intuitive touchscreen operation with functions rarely found in a single instrument. For example, Keithley’s Model DMM7510 graphical sampling multimeter integrates a high speed digitizer that supports displaying and analyzing voltage and current waveforms and transients precisely.

productivity. Simplifying the User Experience Instruments with touchscreen interfaces aren’t just for novice or infrequent users. Touchscreens allow displaying results using larger, more legible characters, provide more details about the measurement, and support on-screen data display and analysis capabilities never before available (Figures 5 and 6). The flexibility to present data graphically as well as numerically helps users

explore results in a way that goes beyond the numbers. Because touchscreen displays are software defined, they are easily changed to reflect the different controls and indicators required for different applications, freeing up valuable “real estate” on the instrument’s front panel. Conclusion As time-to-market pressures increase, more and more users will demand that their instrumentation deliver

Figure 5. DMMs that combine built-in graphing utilities and a large screen make it easier to display and compare stored test results because the users are no longer so dependent on an external PC to analyze measurements.

Figure 6. Instruments with full graphical plotting windows make it easy to convert raw data into useful information easily and display it immediately. The touchscreen supports “pinch and zoom” operation to allow examining data on the graph in detail.

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