PICOWATT 45 YEARS
RV-Elektroniikka Oy PICOWATT has been specialized in manufacturing instruments for thermometry at ultralow temperatures. Founded in February 1978, we gathered 45 years' experience in designing and manufacturing low-noise precision instruments that have helped LT scientists all over the world. In addition to their good price/performance ratio, our products are known for their dependable operation and for their long lifetimes. Even over 20 years old resistance bridges remain in daily use, and because we have always based the demanding measuring circuits on analog techniques, most of our old products can still be serviced.After these busy but interesting years it was finally time for Mr. Voutilainen to retire and therefore all manufacturing has been discontinued and our existing stock of instruments has been sold to an end.
Making and designing cryoelectronic instruments has been to us not only business but also art and lifestyle. We do not plan to close the company in near future - we want to take good care of warranties and other repairs.
There is a large installed base of our products all over the world and sometimes an instrument is "inherited" from a colleague but without documentation. Therefore we maintain the texts almost unchanged on these pages. Useful material, like general descriptions, old manuals and circuit schematics, are available for downloading on the support page and you are also welcome to contact us directly.
THE LATEST PRODUCTS
AVS-48SI Picobridge® ("SI" stands for Serial Interface) is a high-performance cryogenic resistance bridge with an integrated analog temperature controller. It is a "black-box" instrument not having a keyboard or display of its own, and therefore it must communicate with the user's computer. Because of its USB/RS232 interface, any computer type, operating system and programming language can be used as long as they support simple asynchronous serial communication.The AVS-48SI offers both hardware and firmware functions and features that are not found elsewhere. The instrument is controlled serially by mnemonic ASCII commands, but for those who have LabView and do not want to write programs, the included LabView virtual instrument offers a complete resistance bridge and temperature controller without need to write a line of program code.
A cryogenic resistance bridge must have low emissions of radio frequencies and therefore the AVS-48SI -like all our previous bridges- uses quiet analog electronics in the measuring circuitry. Today's instruments must also be intelligent, which requires progammable digital circuits for managing the measurement and for handling the results. In order not to spoil the excellent EMI performance of the analog bridge, the intelligence of the AVS-48SI is placed in a separate external unit that can stay outside the shielded cryostat space and near to the computer. Coupling between the bridge and the computer can be either isolated galvanic (standard) or optical via fibres (optional).
Throughout the design of hardware, firmware and LabView software, one can see that the AVS-48SI is a physicist's approach to resistance thermometry and that the result is a real tool especially for demanding non-routine scientific work. The AVS-48SI can be automatically re-calibrated in the field without external aids, providing a new level of confidence in results. Because of its many useful features, the AVS-48SI may help one to tackle problems that have so far been difficult to deal with.
More about the AVS-48SI...
AVS47-Serial/USB-W and AVS47-Serial/USB-F are economical options for connecting an existing AVS-47, AVS-47A or AVS-47B to any remote system that supports serial communication using the RS232 hardware standard and the simplest possible software protocol. The computer does not need to have a physical RS232 port - it can be replaced by a USB-232 adapter. The -W version has a conventional wire cable between the bridge and the computer. In the -F version, the connection is made via an EMI -safe optical fibre cable. The Serial/USB option consists of one (-W version) or two (-F version) aluminum boxes and of a 5 meter wire or fibre cable. No changes to the bridge are needed.
More about remote control of the AVS-47...
RV-ELEKTRONIIKKA OY Picowatt
Veromiehentie 14
FI-01510 VANTAA
FINLAND
email: reijo.voutilainen@picowatt.fi
LabView is trade mark of National Instruments Corp., U.S.A.
Picobridge is registered trade mark of RV-Elektroniikka Oy, Finland
