CONTROL & DAQ HARDWARE FOR SIMULATORS / TRAINERS

A Wide Variety of I/O for Applications

Benefits of using UEI for your Simulators/Trainers

Increased Up Time: UEI’s products have been engineered to be both reliable and durable. Our products can be mounted directly to the simulator, eliminating any “waterfall” wiring that could lead to failures. In addition, onboard diagnostics provide customers with the means to identify pending or existing faults before they impact training schedules.

Higher Performance: UEI’s hardware uses Gigabit Ethernet technology which allows for extremely fast and reliable communications between the host computer system and the simulator. You get the ability to accurately update your simulators at up to 10,000 updates per second.

Faster Repairs and Maintenance: No system is perfect. UEI understands that and has solutions in place to remedy those concerns.We understand the importance of being able to quickly identify the cause of a failure and get it repaired without headaches. Every output of our systems can be independently monitored, and all inputs can easily be connected to a test signal. The combination of these two steps allow UEI systems to automatically detect issues which will inform repair technicians on what part of the system has to be addressed.

Secure COTS Source: When selecting new hardware products, the majority of customers are concerned with product obsolescence that could adversely affect their ability to build and maintain their trainers/simulators for years to come. When companies buy our products, we enter into lasting partnership. All our partners know they are getting a secure source of product that can always be replaced. As an example, we still supply OEM customers with ISA-bus boards designed over 20 years ago!

How we conquer your Simulator/Trainer Challenges

Flexibility: UEI’s hardware is extremely versatile with many different chassis options and all of our 85+ boards running on a single API. UEI even has some of the less common interfaces such as ARINC-453/708, synchro/resolver, strain gauge simulated outputs, high-voltage and high-current analog outputs, differential counters, HDLC/SDLC synchronous serial and more.

Features:

• Two common problems in simulators/trainers are incandescent/LED indicators and the bulky expensive power supplies that would be required in order to enable various dimmer functions. UEI eliminates both issues by building it’s digital control boards with programmable soft start/stop PWM modes.
• Achieving real-time control over Ethernet is often a major concern for customers. At UEI, we eliminate this concern by developing a patented UDP protocol that enables us to guarantee real-time updates at up to 10 Khz over standard Ethernet networks.
• Replacing reflective memory systems can be very expensive. UEI has patented a "data sharing" protocol that allows us to achieve the same functionality as reflective memory without any special boards on the host or I/O chassis.
• UEI’s Guardian Channels, which are included on every channel of our board, enable our boards to monitor themselves. Our unique Guardian features allow for programmable circuit breakers, built-in testing, and current/voltage readback. This allows for easy identification of opens, shorts, mis-wiring, and faults.
  

Experience: We “speak” simulator at UEI. There is no need worry about items on legacy simulators that are not well documented as we have likely seen it before and already have a solution. You can always work with our UEI application engineers to evaluate your legacy issues to best establish a working and reliable connection. In the unlikely event that we do not have a COTS solution, we may well be able to design one for you or help you find a third-party solution. Some examples Include:

• UEI received a synchro interface which our existing synchro board did not have the output power to drive, so we built a new higher drive board (the DNx-AI-256).
• UEI had a customer with a legacy altitude indicator with no documentation other than a pinout. Though the pinout matched a synchro configuration, we were able to deduce the indicator simply needed an analog output to drive it.
• UEI had a customer who required a higher voltage analog output waveform than we could provide in-house. We explored the market and found an external buffer that could be driven by our function generator output that solved the customer problem.
  

Looking Towards the Future of Standardization

• SCARS Initiative: The United States Air Force is modernizing its simulators to include these 4 common technical areas: Simulator Common Architecture; Security Operations and Services; Management Services (to include Standards); and Library. SCARS would address the inherent problems of multiple simulator designs acquired over multiple decades by pursuing what some have called “a smart phone approach.” This approach would emphasize an open system design while updating and converting simulator configuration baselines and also implementing increasingly critical cyber security measures.

• FACE Initiative: The Future Airborne Capability Environment consortium is a government and industry partnership working to define an open avionic environment for all military airborne platform types. The FACE Technical Standard is the open avionics standard for making military computing operations more robust, interoperable, portable and secure.

UEI’s hardware and I/O are perfect solutions for simulator/trainer systems and applications:

• UEI’s flexible and rugged chassis allows for system placement in to any designated space.
• Extensive catalog of I/O to meet all your needs.
• Long-term 10-yr availability guarantee and 3-yr hardware warranty standard for all PowerDNA products.
• Compatibility with a wide range of operating systems such as Windows, Linux, QNX, VxWorks and more.
• Compatibility with a wide range of programming languages such as C, C++, MATLAB, LabVIEW and more allow for high code reusability and easy development.
• Hardware encryption for enhanced cyber security.
• Connection through Ethernet enables easy portability, lower implementation costs and ease of use.
• UEI’s ability to make custom I/O boards leads to more accurate, reliable and easier testing. We make more capabilities possible for commercial and defense simulator/trainer engineers and operators.