Virtual Instruments for Power Electronics Based on Free Software Tools

Virtual instruments described in this paper utilize a digital oscilloscope as an acquisition module and a personal computer to process the data. Described instruments measure mean value, root-mean-square value, power, apparent power, power factor, displacement power factor, total harmonic distortion, efficiency, and compute the waveform spectra. The measurements are organized at several stages, to provide verification at intermediate result level. Measurement process is fully automated, covering data acquisition, data processing, and report generation. The system is realized applying free software exclusively, and all the programs presented in the paper are freely available.