The MicroCAT is a development of the well established MicroDaq system developed to take advantage of the considerable advantages of EtherCAT over Ethernet.

The MicroCAT is a single box solution providing an ultra-miniature complete pressure scanning unit that outputs engineering unit data over Ether-CAT and CAN.

The use of EtherCAT gives the user the following advantages:

[1] Increased bandwidth. EtherCAT is many times more efficient than Ethernet making the acquisition of high speed data from multiple units much more straight forward.

[2] Non-vendor specific protocol. As the MicroCAT adheres to the EtherCAT standard, no special code needs to be written in order to interface with it.

[3] Integrated time stamping. The EtherCAT protocol includes a distributed clock that time stamps the data to within ±20μS.

[4] Network topology independent. EtherCAT is insensitive to network topology and the units are designed to be daisy-chained in loop or star confi guration.

The MicroCAT contains a PSI ESP™ pressure scanner with which it interfaces, providing the user with a straight-forward digital interface. Where available, the MicroCAT takes full advantage of the DTC technology within the scanners.
The DTC scanners contain all their coeffi cients in an EEPROM and the temperature of every transducer is measured to calculate the compensation.
The DTC scanners also contain a 3X deranging option and shuttle valve position sense and all these functions can be accessed by the supplied software.

The MicroCAT may also be used with conventional scanners and provides the user with a scanner temperature measurement so that thermal mapping of the scanner can be carried out using the supplied software.