Emerson Presents New PXI Instruments

Engineering and validation teams in high-reliability sectors—including aerospace and defense, transportation, semiconductor manufacturing, and scientific research—face escalating pressure to accelerate time-to-market while managing increasingly complex mixed-signal devices under test. Historically, configuring high-channel automated test environments has presented steep financial and operational hurdles. High-end modular instrumentation often carries prohibitive capital costs for entry-level test benches, while traditional manual bring-up, individual device-driver calibration, and test-routine script authoring consume hundreds of engineering hours. As validation teams transition from ad-hoc benchtop troubleshooting to high-throughput production lines, test architectures demand cost-effective modular hardware coupled with software automation tools and domain-specific artificial intelligence to eliminate repetitive test system design overhead.

Modular PXIe Instrumentation for High-Throughput Test Benches
To lower the barrier to automated measurement architectures, Emerson announced an expansion of its National Instruments (NI) PXI portfolio with new cost-effective test hardware. The releases are anchored by the NI PXIe-4086 digital multimeter (DMM) and expanded configurations of the NI PXIe-5160 and NI PXIe-5162 high-speed oscilloscopes.

The NI PXIe-4086 DMM serves as an entry-level instrument for high-throughput, high-accuracy validation, delivering 6½ digits of resolution alongside 35 parts-per-million basic accuracy. It provides multi-parameter acquisition—including alternating current and direct current voltage and current, two-wire and four-wire resistance, diode checks, and frequency measurements—across measurement ranges up to 300 volts and 1 ampere at reading rates reaching 15,000 samples per second.

Complementing the DMM, the new NI PXIe-5160 and PXIe-5162 oscilloscope variants provide flexible signal capture across bandwidths reaching up to 1.5 GHz in two-channel and four-channel modular configurations. Built with 1 gigabyte of onboard memory to balance extended acquisition durations against system cost, the digitizers provide 10-bit vertical resolution and up to 7.5 effective number of bits (ENOB) to preserve signal fidelity when capturing high-frequency pulses, serial buses, and fast transient edges.

AI-Assisted Bring-Up and Automated Test Scripting
The hardware additions integrate directly into Emerson's NI software ecosystem, bridging manual bench troubleshooting and fully automated production test suites. Through updated support in NI InstrumentStudio, engineers can execute no-code configuration, multi-instrument interactive visualization, and hardware bring-up directly within a single unified software environment, eliminating the need to write custom debug code for routine verification.

To further accelerate test development, the platform incorporates NI Nigel AI, a purpose-built, domain-optimized artificial intelligence assistant tailored for automated test workflows. NI Nigel assists engineers in generating instrument control sequences, interpreting complex measurement topologies, and accelerating debugging routines across multi-instrument setups. David Hall, Vice President of NI Product Marketing within Emerson’s Test and Measurement business, noted that coupling accessible PXI instrumentation with AI-assisted software enables engineering teams to spend less time designing test fixtures and more time focusing on core product validation.

Additional Context
This section details technical specifications and competitive benchmarking not included in the original product announcement.

In automated test and measurement architectures governed by the PXI Systems Alliance (PXISA) specifications, high-throughput mixed-signal testing relies on the high-speed PXI Express backplane, which routes dedicated point-to-point PCI Express Gen 2 and Gen 3 data pipelines alongside precision timing lines. The PXI platform integrates a 100 megahertz differential system clock, differential star triggers, and localized trigger buses to coordinate nanosecond-level time synchronization across discrete digitizers, multimeters, and matrix switch modules without requiring external coaxial inter-chassis cabling. The modular architecture conforms to IEEE 488.2 / IVI (Interchangeable Virtual Instruments) driver standards, allowing automated test software environments like NI TestStand and LabVIEW to substitute hardware modules without rewriting underlying test sequences.

Within the automated test and modular instrumentation market, Emerson’s NI portfolio benchmarks directly against PXI and modular hardware offerings from Keysight Technologies, Rohde & Schwarz, Pickering Interfaces, and Marvin Test Solutions. While high-performance platforms from competitors, such as Keysight’s high-precision M9000 series, target high-frequency 5G/6G radio-frequency characterization and advanced metrology labs at higher price points, Emerson's NI PXIe-4086 and updated PXIe-5160 series target mid-tier functional test and production validation cells. By embedding generative and assistive AI models through NI Nigel directly within the instrument software stack, Emerson addresses developer shortages and code maintenance bottlenecks, positioning the NI PXI platform as an accessible, scalable automated test architecture for enterprise manufacturing floors.

Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.