Automated testing facility for television industry

This thesis is the result of a research project on an Automated Testing Facility (ATF) for the television industry. The purpose of this project is to provide the industry with on automatic system for measuring television performance from different points of view. Manual methods for measuring television performance have been used for years, and they have become standard industrial practice. However, manual processes limit the volume and consistency of the measurements. Therefore, the ATF project converts the manual procedures to automated ones using the LabVIEW graphical programming language. This thesis reviews the background of the ATF project and studies the benefits of the automatic system. It presents the diagnostic software developed for the ATF system. It then discusses the instrument driver for the CA-100 CRT Color Analyzer that communicates with the instrument through a GPIB bus. It also describes the code developed for the color temperature test on a direct-view TV as an example of the automated tests. This study demonstrates that the productivity and consistency of the automated tests are substantially better than manual measurements.