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ZETLab Studio is the ideal tool for building custom measurement, automation and control systems!

Creating your own devices? Now it has become more affordable, faster and easier!

1.	Formulate the task
2.	Use ZETLab Studio development tools
3.	Process the results

The components of ZETLab Studio are designed to simplify as much as possible the process of creating custom instruments and applications for measurement and signal processing. Everything you need to build powerful measurement and computing systems is here. With a minimum of effort, time and money, you can construct a truly multipurpose instrument that can solve your problem. What about upgrading? It's very simple: add the components of ZETLab Studio to your applications and get the results of signal processing!

ZETLab software and hardware for computer automation of measurement, control and modeling are widely used in various fields of industry, research, and education. The hardware includes virtually all components of modern measurement and control systems: multipurpose boards for collecting and displaying analog and digital signals, multimeters, generators, distributed measurement and control devices, matching devices on PCI, USB and Ethernet buses, etc. The concept of virtual instruments can significantly extend the functionality of established test and measurement systems, while reducing labor costs for their development. ZETLab Studio is a set of embedded components for fast and efficient development of measuring, monitoring and control programs. Over a period of 20 years, we have created a convenient tool for creating high-performance signal processing systems in real time.

Imagine a tool, device or system that corresponds exactly to the requirements of your problem - a tool that collects, analyzes and presents data as well as manages it in exactly the way you want. With ZETLab, an ordinary PC in your laboratory or production area can become such a tool. Or perhaps it will be a small laptop equipped with additional input devices. ZETLab Studio, Labview - ZETLab Studio, like Labview, is an integrated development environment (IDE) for creating programs for data collection and processing as well as the controlling peripheral devices. Programming is done in any object-oriented programming language - MS Visual Basic, MS Visual C++, Borland Delphi, Borland C++ Builder* - using the library elements and the ready-made ZETLab programs. The combination of the widely used programming language and a large number of different components can significantly reduce the development time of complex systems while maintaining high program execution speed. The libraries of current data processing and analysis algorithms make ZETLab a multipurpose tool for creating integrated PC-based systems.

* The functionality is limited when you program in Microsoft C#, Borland Delphi and Borland C++ Builder because the peculiarities of these programming languages.

The ZETLab kit includes more than 100 different ready-made software components and libraries that you can integrate into your applications. The ZETLab package of instrument programs is based on the principle of many programs working simultaneously. With other packages, which hold a monopoly on the resources of the input/output devices, you need to set the parameters of the input signals, input a signal, process it, create signals and display the results in one program. But with ZETLab Studio you need only select the necessary tools and combine them into one project. Thus, ZETLab Studio makes it possible to avoid the difficulties of "text" and "graphic" programming. If you are looking for the best way to program your measurement and control systems without losing performance, then ZETLab Studio is exactly what you need.

Development of a complete system

Most software packages cover only one aspect of a given problem, such as data collection, analysis, presentation and control. ZETLab gives you all the necessary tools, integrated in a single methodology, so it's highly unlikely that you will ever need to leave the ZETLab environment. There are over 50 different ready-made general-purpose programs at your disposal — virtual instruments, oscilloscopes, recorders, voltmeters, frequency meters, narrowband and fractional octave analyzers, correlators, recorders, generators of various signals, filters of high and low frequencies, a digital I/O device and specialized instrumentation: distortion analyzers, amplitude-phase-frequency response meters, oscillators with feedback, and programs for modal and sequence analysis.

On the basis of the finished devices you put together your test or measuring stand, or production cycle control system or monitoring system. Save your project with one click, and you can run it as needed. All virtual instrument programs operate in real time as well as in the mode of digitized signal processing in the form of files. The signal recording and playback tools allow you to record a signal and process it using different algorithms. This significantly minimizes development and debugging time for the finished system.

The scalability of the ZETLab package allows simultaneous use of several different I/O devices on one PC. You can use the multichannel ADC device for slowly-changing signals and high-performance ADCs for rapidly-changing ones.

By connecting several computers in a local network, you can work with one measuring tract on multiple computers in real time. This is especially useful during the training process. It is also widely used in continuous control and monitoring systems where one computer is used for continuous recording of signals and emitting warning signals and another computer is used to diagnose the nodes being monitored.

An important advantage of the ZETLab package is the fact that many of the virtual instruments included with I/O devices are certified as measurement devices and entered into the official register of Russia.

You can also write your own applications that control the virtual instruments and collect the results from them. This makes it much easier to metrologically certify the system. The Unit component is used to control the existing programs. The Description of the Unit component and examples of its use are given below. All virtual instruments are able to record the results to a file. The ZETLab package provides everything for creating reports in Microsoft Excel and Word with minimum effort. In addition, you have broad capabilities with regard to data manipulation such as reading from and writing to a disk, sending data over a network and printing it on your printer or plotter.

Building your own virtual instrument

When you use the ZETLab Studio developer tools, you can write your own virtual instrument program. Since the ZETLab software allows you to launch and run a variety of programs, you need to divide your task into several independent programs. A virtual instrument program can be written in any object-oriented programming language. Various software components are installed in the program that are responsible for input/output of analog and digital data, graphical display of two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphs, XY graphs, graphs in polar coordinates, integral levels and digital indicators. You can also put standard components of object-oriented language into the program: buttons, text boxes, file-opening dialog boxes and many other things. The large number of textbooks and examples in the existing programming languages allows you to study them in any degree of detail. All the components are self-documented, which means you can quickly learn the necessary commands. After compilation, you get an executable program code that allows you to make full use of your computer's computing power and distribute the program's executable working file without its source code. You can apply your own design to the resulting program and use it alongside with the ZETLab programs.

Structure of ZETLab Studio

ZETLab Studio is an integrated set of tools and class libraries similar to Labview for Visual Studio.NET, Visual Studio 6.0 and Borland Delphi, which are used in solving measurement and automation problems. ZETLab Studio greatly accelerates application development by supporting ActiveX- and .NET objects, object-oriented measurement hardware interfaces and providing additional libraries for data analysis, control elements, network data transfer tools and powerful graphics libraries for data presentation.

Whatever you use to collect data - PCI, USB, Ethernet modules from 24 bits to 10 MHz - ZETLab Studio gives you all the tools to develop a high-level application programming interface (API) to you in a convenient development environment.

ZETLab Studio provides a full range of measurement data analysis and processing functions. With ZETLab Studio you can use a wide range of tools for analyzing and processing data such as spectral analysis, statistical and digital signal processing, signal filtering and fast Fourier transform. Since the analysis is performed by your data collection application, you can save results that are already processed to a file.

You no longer need to spend months creating professional graphical user interfaces for measurement and automation software. For each type of measurement, ZETLab Studio, like Labview, provides user interface elements, which can be placed and combined as you wish in order to solve each specific task. Among the available controls are various buttons, knobs, sliders, LEDs and measuring instruments. To present the results of the analysis, there are programs for presenting data in graphical form, XY-view, two and three-dimensional graph, in polar coordinates, and with an afterglow effect from an analog cathode-ray tube. The convenient graphics scaling system, smooth cursor movement and ability to save image data for reports to Microsoft Excel and Word allow you to quickly obtain the necessary results for subsequent printing. The wide range of items available in ZETLab Studio allows you to present data in a more informative way than with traditional instruments.

Regardless of the task, the speed of the program is a critical factor in data analysis. The analysis libraries make the maximum use of your computer's computing power. The virtual instruments are optimized for using the math coprocessor, MMX, SSE1, SSE2 and HyperThreading technology. In addition, there are specialized libraries that use the computing power of digital DSP processors installed on our company's ADC-DAC boards.

You can spend hours figuring out how to enter data into your program. Even more time will be spent on real-time graphics without flicker and redraw. We offer you advanced programming technology that lets you save time on programming processing and display applications.

Structure of measurement and testing tasks

Most testing, measuring or research tasks can be represented as an "accumulation - processing - results presentation" sequence of logical operations (see picture). ZETLab Studio has separate components for each operation. You can assemble them like Lego blocks in your application-creation program. All these blocks are optimized for speed and reliability. You can select the optimal hardware and software for the task at hand:

• data accumulation;
• processing and analysis;
• results presentation;
• programming examples.

Unlike many other similar systems, such as Labview, ZETLab Studio does not require you to use a separate programming language and/or interpreter. User programs are created in Visual Basic, Visual C and Delphi. The following subprograms have been written to support custom programs:

• ZETServer, a data server;
• Grid, a graphical component for viewing Y(x) dependencies;
• Gramma, a graphical component for displaying 2-D and 3-D graphics;
• ZADC, a library for working with ADC and DAC modules;
• PlotterXY, a graphical component for viewing X(t)-Y(t) dependencies in 2-D and 3-D;
• Polar, a graphical component for displaying graphs in polar coordinates;
• Unit, a component for controlling devices (control and automation module);
• DSP, a digital signal processing software library that makes use of Pentium IV (MMX, SSE, SSE2) capabilities.

There are several levels of access to the digitized data and results.

Custom programs can work directly with the drivers of the ADC-DAC modules, while a single driver can run several programs, including the ZETServer data server program. In this case, the programs receive data from the ADC in integer format without any changes.

Custom programs can work with the data server. The server supports simultaneous operation with several drivers of different types and ADC-DAC sampling rates. The server creates a virtual DAC channel as the input channel and supports virtual channel programs. When using the "Registrar" in the mode of reading digitized data from files, the server creates a channel according to the number of existing files. That is, a user program written to work with the server can operate without any adaptation to the various modules of the ADC-DAC, with real data coming from the ADC modules in real time, with digitized data recorded in data files with data obtained through simulation. When working with the server, the programs receive data in floating point format with all the gain and correction coefficients in the specified units of measurement: mV, m/s², Pa, mA, etc.

The custom programs can create virtual channels. The simplest example of a program that works with virtual channels is the Signal Filtering program. This program filters signals in real time and records the resulting signal in the virtual channel. The virtual channel is created at the server and is supported by it. All the instrument programs can process the additional virtual channel.

Using the Unit control and automation module, the custom software can run instrument programs, set various processing parameters in these programs and get the current readings from the instrument programs.