EE Readers Select 2006’s Best Products

Thank you to our many readers who took time from their busy schedules to select the best products published in EE during 2006. For the 12th consecutive year, we asked our readers to vote for the most outstanding from among the many products introduced to the test and measurement market by a number of equipment manufacturers.

The selection process began by compiling a group of products representing ATE, Communications Test, Data Acquisition, Environmental Test, Instrumentation, PC Test, and Software. These determinations were based on the number of responses that each product received during the year through EE’s RSLeads program.

Communications Test:  Capturing the honors in Communications Test is Yokogawa Corp. of America with the DL7400 Series. These signal analyzers perform protocol analysis and waveform observation for FlexRay control networks and show the correlated results on the same screen. A FlexRay network transmits and receives data at 10 Mb/s, 10× faster than a conventional CAN, and features high levels of reliability in data transmission. The series comes with a function that allows a trigger to be set at a point on a FlexRay signal alone or in combination with other signal types as well as when communications failures occur.

PC Test:  Repeating winners is the theme of this year’s awards as Yokogawa Corp. of America captured a second honor, this time in PC Test. The busXplorer USB 2.0 Compliance Test Solution consists of a USB test fixture and USB compliance test software that work together with a DL9200 Digital Oscilloscope controlled by a PC via Ethernet. It performs high-speed device, host, and hub electrical tests and legacy low- and full-speed tests as defined by the USB Implementers Forum. The software provides step-by-step instructions for completing compliance tests and when, linked with the company’s Xviewer Waveform Analysis software, can organize test results by creating and automatically naming a report for every test of each device.