Software built forcommissioning,plant operations andmachine diagnostics.

Three groups, with the same software underneath. Commissioning teams at turbine-generator manufacturers use the automated test tools and send results straight to the report. Plant owners and operators use the Power Generation Maintenance Manager module inside their plant’s maintenance workflow. Diagnostic professionals use the acquisition and analysis tools for measurement campaigns, with hardware bought or rented per job.

With a DX-8 or DX-4, connect the sensor trunks, plug in power and Ethernet, open the project and start acquiring. With your own NI hardware, count a few hours — install DaqExpert, point it at the task already configured in NI MAX, start acquisition and verify the signals. There is no integration project and no server to stand up. Updates afterwards are checked at startup and installed in the background.

No. The automated test tools walk through the measurement sequence and compute the results, and the ISO 10816 / 20816 thresholds are pre-configured so a reading is placed in its normative zone without manual lookup. A technician who knows the machine can run a campaign after a few hours of guided onboarding. Support is included from the first day, and an engineer can review the recorded data afterwards.

The DX-8 covers mechanical and magnetic measurements — vibration, air gap, magnetic flux, speed, phase and temperature — through 8 × M12 sensor trunks and 8 × BNC direct inputs, with 2 × Ethernet and a 120 V AC inlet. The DX-4 covers electrical measurements — three-phase voltage (Va, Vb, Vc, Vn), three-phase current (Ia, Ib, Ic) and 8 analog inputs (AI0–AI7) on BNC — with 1 × Ethernet, a 100–250 V AC inlet and an outer size of 258 × 208 × 144.5 mm. Choose by the domain your campaign measures; if the answer is both, the two units are meant to be used together.

Yes, and that is the usual configuration for a full commissioning campaign. DaqExpert brings both units into one project, so electrical, mechanical and magnetic signals are reviewed on one timeline instead of in separate files. A load rejection or a heat run is far easier to read when the electrical record and the vibration record share the same time base.

The connectors and cable assemblies are pre-made, so there is no screwdriver termination at those connections — which is where most wiring errors and most of the lost time occur. M12 runs extend by connecting a male end to a female end, with no splicing and no new terminations. The practical effect is that more of the setup window goes into preparing a reliable measurement rather than into building cables.

Standard IEPE / ICP accelerometers work without modification — on NI acquisition the IEPE excitation is supplied by the NI module itself, so there is no external conditioner to add and no proprietary sensor to buy. Displacement sensors work as well, including the eddy-current proximity probes used for shaft vibration, provided the output is analog and within the input range (typically 0–10 V or ±10 V). DaqExpert pairs X and Y channels for orbit plots and SMax. Air gap, magnetic flux, speed, phase and temperature channels are handled on the DX-8 in the same project.

Yes. NI-DAQmx is a supported acquisition source, and any device recognized in NI MAX can be used — USB-6000 series, USB-6210/6211, cDAQ chassis and C Series modules, PXI. DaqExpert reads the task you already configured in NI MAX rather than asking you to describe the hardware a second time. Recorded files are the other source: TDMS Replay plays a recording back as if it were a card, so the live screens work with no hardware present.

The DX-8 presents 8 M12 sensor trunks plus 8 direct BNC inputs; the DX-4 presents three-phase voltage and current plus 8 analog inputs. Beyond that, channel count is a hardware question: with your own NI equipment a cDAQ-9178 carrying eight 4-channel modules gives 32 channels, and multi-device setups go past a single chassis. On the software side the task sample rate is accepted up to 200 kHz, and frequency-measurement channels up to 100 kHz. Live charts are not a constraint on channel count — the refresh cadence adapts instead of dropping data.

Yes. A Modbus TCP interface reads a WattsOn-Mark II meter and exposes its values as channels beside the sampled signals: total and per-phase active, reactive and apparent power, L-N and L-L voltages, per-phase currents, power factor, system frequency and average phase angle. PT and CT ratios are configurable, so readings are scaled to the primary side of your transformers. Voltage harmonics and THD do not come from the meter — they are computed from the sampled waveform in the TIF & THD tool.

A 64-bit Windows 10 or Windows 11 machine, the NI-DAQmx runtime for NI acquisition, and a DirectX 11-capable GPU for the chart engine. It installs per user, under your own local application data, so no administrator rights are required — which matters on a laptop you take to a job site. Virtual machines are not recommended for high-rate acquisition.

Yes to both. Each project isolates its own configuration — acquisition task, channel list, calculated channels such as keyphasor, SMax and power, filters, panel layout and report templates — and switching projects takes a few seconds, so one laptop can cover several units. The layout is persisted per project, including panel positions and sizes, chart types, Y-axis ranges, filters and selected channels. Reopening the software puts you back on the screen you left.

The acquisition and analysis applications are available in English, French, German and Spanish, selectable in the application settings. The reporting module is English only.

Nine: Bearing Run, WG Operation, Load Rejection, TIF & THD, OC Saturation, SC Saturation, Heat Run, Generator Efficiency and Acoustic Mapping. Each one guides the measurement, computes the result and produces a structured test output with a direct send-to-report action, so the calculation and the record of it are not two separate exercises. They are licensed individually, so a team that only runs heat runs and bearing runs does not pay for the rest.

IEEE 115 for synchronous machine testing, IEC 60034-1 and IEC 60034-9 for rating and noise, and ISO 10816 / 20816 for vibration evaluation zones. The reason for implementing them is that the number in the report stays traceable to a defined method instead of to a spreadsheet nobody can audit. If a specific clause matters to your acceptance procedure, ask and we will show you how it is computed.

Yes, two ways. The technician’s recording can be opened in Data Analysis by an engineer anywhere, which is how a commissioning team separates field work from engineering review. For live visibility, the Remote Live Monitoring module connects to the running session when the technician authorizes access — access is granted from the machine doing the acquisition, not from outside.

Live multi-channel time charts, trend charts and trend dashboards, FFT, XY orbit, time history and a data table, plus statistics on recorded data. Calculated channels — keyphasor, SMax, RMS, power quantities — are derived from the measured channels and behave like any other channel in those views. Campbell diagrams, envelope analysis, spectrogram and order tracking are in development and are not part of the shipped release.

Yes. Data Analysis opens previously recorded TDMS files and provides the offline views — trend, time history, FFT, orbit, data table, statistics — with no acquisition hardware present, which is what makes office review and post-incident investigation practical. A multi-gigabyte recording opens in about ten seconds. Inside the acquisition application, TDMS Replay goes further and plays a recording back as if it were a live card, which is useful to rehearse a test or to show a result on the live screens.

Yes, and the reduction is deliberate rather than incidental. The engine reduces the visible window to 15,000 points before drawing: LTTB below 5 kHz, where the shape of the curve is what matters, and peak-preserving MinMax above it, because in vibration a missed peak is a measurement error, not a cosmetic one. The chart engine then re-resamples in MinMax at every zoom level, and zooming in always goes back to the stored samples. Refresh cadence is adaptive — the drawing budget is measured and the rate moves between 60 and 1 frame per second depending on how many charts are open — so adding charts costs frame rate, never samples.

It analyzes the vibration channels as the calculation windows complete and compares the result against the applicable ISO 10816 / 20816 zones (A = normal, B = acceptable, C = monitor, D = critical). The evaluation accounts for turbine type (Francis, Kaplan, Pelton, Propeller), runner blade count, guide vane count, nominal speed and mounting configuration, so the threshold applied is the one that fits the unit rather than a generic limit. When a reading leaves its expected zone, a plain-language alert describes what was detected and on which channel.

Every chart and every test tool has a send-to-report action that captures the result and places it in the active report. The editor provides blocks for the cover page, free text, statistics tables, pass/fail checklists and signature lines. The finished document exports to Word (.docx) for final editing, exports to PDF, or prints directly.

Yes — DX-8 and DX-4 hardware is available for purchase or rental. Renting suits a one-off campaign, a commissioning schedule that overlaps with another job, or a trial before committing to a purchase. Send us the dates and the measurements your campaign requires and we will quote it, equipment and licence together.

Support is included from the first day with any licence. Onboarding is normally a guided session of a few hours on your own machine and your own test procedure, which is more useful than generic training. Field support during a commissioning campaign can be arranged — ask when you request the quote, since availability depends on the schedule.

Both. There is a free logger with no licence and no time limit: acquire, watch the signals live on the time and time-history charts, record natively to TDMS and export to CSV. In that mode every real channel of the task is recorded — channel selection, the advanced charts, the power meter, commissioning, Data Analysis and Data Reporting stay licensed. There is also a 30-day trial with every module unlocked and no credit card; when it ends you license what you used, or keep using the free logger.

Yes. Licensing is per feature — 63 of them, grouped into the modules shown on this site — so a team that needs heat runs and trend analysis does not pay for air gap or acoustic mapping. Added features unlock as soon as the licence file is applied, with no reinstall and no new download. Whatever you license, the free logger keeps working at no cost.

Yes. New features, fixes and performance work come at no extra cost with any licence, and the free logger stays up to date as well. DaqExpert checks for updates at startup and installs them in the background.

Per installation, that is per workstation: the licence unlocks the features you chose on that machine. It is not a per-seat subscription and there is no monthly per-user fee. For several machines or a whole team, multi-installation licensing is available — get in touch and we will set it up.

No. Acquisition data — TDMS recordings, analyses, reports — stays on your machine or your internal network. Only minimal anonymous information leaves the workstation, such as the version number used for the update check and aggregated usage counts with no identification. Those communications can be disabled entirely.

Yes. The software runs inside your network with no internet connection and nothing leaves it, which is what sensitive industrial sites require. The licence is a local file and needs no outbound call to work, so a disconnected or air-gapped installation is a supported configuration rather than a workaround. Get in touch and we will prepare it with you.