Engineers now can use the first-ever National Instruments six-slot PXI chassis for low-cost remote control and portable real-time control. For remote control, a PC, server or workstation controls the PXI chassis through MXI-Express, a transparent PCI Express-to-PCI bridge. Engineers also can use MXI-4 for traditional remote control of PXI.

To reduce the initial PXI setup cost by 44 percent per slot (compared to a PXI-1031 chassis and MXI-4 kit), engineers can combine the new NI PXI-1036 chassis with a MXI-Express remote controller kit. With this low-cost PXI entry point, engineers can control up to five modular instrument or data acquisition modules across a remote link that offers 110 MB/s of sustained analog bandwidth - a more than 40 percent increase compared to MXI-4 PCI remote control of PXI. The NI PXI-1036 chassis works with all National Instruments remote controllers and two-slot wide PXI/CompactPCI controllers, such as the NI PXI-8145, for portable real-time control.

The new chassis increases the number of slots available for measurement modules from three in the NI PXI-1031 chassis to five. With the same dimensions as the existing four-slot portable system, the NI PXI-1036 chassis adds two slots for PXI/CompactPCI devices by reducing the width of the supported embedded controller.

The compact, rugged and portable chassis weighs less than 12 pounds and has a small footprint for portability. It features operating temperature range of 0 to 50 °C, and additional shock and vibration of 30 g. The PXI-1036 DC chassis offers a combined AC and DC power supply.

The NI PXI-1036 chassis works seamlessly with a variety of NI software including the LabVIEW graphical development environment, NI TestStand test management software, LabWindows/CVI ANSI C development environment and SignalExpress interactive measurement environment. It also works with all PXI and CompactPCI instruments, including modular instruments and data acquisition devices.