National Instruments announced the release of the Watchdog Agent Prognostics Toolkit for NI LabVIEW, system design software. Through this toolkit, National Instruments has enabled the extension of LabVIEW to machine Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) applications. This toolkit was developed in collaboration between National Instruments and the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Intelligent Maintenance Systems at the University of Cincinnati, operated by the National Science Foundation. The product meets engineers' monitoring needs and is suitable for reporting the status of machines, structures, components, and systems.

Dr. Jay Lee, Professor and Project Leader at the Center on Intelligent Maintenance Systems, stated, “Companies are seeking systematic ways to rapidly develop and deploy prognostics for failure prevention, condition monitoring, and the pre-diagnosis of machine parts. The new Watchdog Agent Prognostics Toolkit for NI LabVIEW provides an easy-to-use solution for predictive maintenance and prognosis.”
The Watchdog Agent Toolkit provides a diagnostic solution that can significantly improve engineering efficiency for developing PHM applications. This toolkit integrates with LabVIEW's advanced signal processing capabilities and various analyses from the NI Sound and Vibration Measurement Suite. It offers a set of algorithms including logistic regression, statistical pattern matching, auto-setting maps, support vector machines, and Gaussian mixture models. These algorithms enable efficient monitoring by converting various field sensor readings into summarized status information values. This toolkit also includes a status radar chart that displays the configured status values of multiple machine components on a single display.

In addition to integration with the Sound and Vibration Measurement Suite, the Watchdog Agent Toolkit can read historical data acquired from NI measurement hardware (including NI CompactRIO, CompactDAQ, PXI, and PCI). Furthermore, this toolkit can integrate with the IOtech eZ-TOMAS Technical Data Management Streaming (TDMS) data plugin, CalBay Systems' VibDaq, and any sensor data acquisition system based on NI TDMS data files.

For more information and downloads on the Watchdog Agent Toolkit for NI LabVIEW, please visit ni.com/watchdogagent.