Quick Tips

TEDS stands for Transducer Electronic Data Sheet, and is a component of the IEEE 1451.X series of standards. iTEDS is Endevco's trademark name applied to our sensors that follow this standard. Simply put, TEDS is a way to make a sensor "smart."

By embedding a digital chip inside the sensor (typically an accelerometer), the sensor now has information stored onboard. By properly querying the sensor during use, this information can be used to make execution of a large testing program more efficient and faster. Some examples of the information that can be stored on a TEDS sensor are: manufacturer name, type of sensor, serial number, date of last calibration and sensitivity. The exact information stored and the format is specified in IEEE 1451.4 and can be obtained from the manufacturer. Endevco will certainly help you with this.

For Endevco products, TEDS is implemented in our ISOTRON (IEPE) products. The sensor is queried by interrupting the normal IEPE supply current and reversing the current. This triggers the digital chip to expect a command from the host computer. The host computer, acting as part of the data acquisition system, can then issue a command to the sensor to report its serial number or sensitivity, for example. Most major data acquisition system vendors now have systems available with TEDS functionality that can do this with little or no programming.

The ability to query the sensor has tremendous value when performing large multi-channel tests, such as modal analysis of large structures like aircraft or naval vessels. Any test involving large numbers of sensors can benefit.

For example, a structure using hundreds of accelerometers is being tested. The test manager decides she needs to verify that the calibration date of all the accelerometers is less than six months old. With regular sensors, this would have to be done manually with a visual inspection for a serial number, and the calibration certificate for each sensor would have to be pulled to verify age of calibration. This process could take days and seriously delay the test, wasting valuable lab time. If the sensors are TEDS type, the test manager could simply use the host computer to query each sensor for last date of calibration, verifying calibration age within a matter of minutes, if not faster.

Contact our applications engineers to learn more about our TEDS accelerometers.


» Return to front page