Instrumentation

Instrumentation is the variety of measuring instruments to monitor and control a process. It is the art and science of measurement and control of process variables within a production, laboratory, or manufacturing area.

An instrument is a device that measures a physical quantity such as flow, temperature, level, distance, angle, or pressure. Instruments may be as simple as direct reading thermometers or may be complex multi-variable process analyzers. Instruments are often part of a control system in refineries, factories, and vehicles. The control of processes is one of the main branches of applied instrumentation. Instrumentation can also refer to handheld devices that measure some desired variable. Diverse handheld instrumentation is common in laboratories, but can be found in the household as well. For example, a smoke detector is a common instrument found in most western homes.

Instruments attached to a control system may provide signals used to operate solenoids, valves, regulators, circuit breakers, or relays. These devices control a desired output variable, and provide either remote or automated control capabilities. These are often referred to as final control elements when controlled remotely or by a control system.

Instrumentation (disambiguation)

Instrumentation is the art and science of measurement and control.

Instrumentation may also refer to:

Science and technology

Other

See also

Instrumentation (computer programming)

In the context of computer programming, instrumentation refers to an ability to monitor or measure the level of a product's performance, to diagnose errors and to write trace information. Programmers implement instrumentation in the form of code instructions that monitor specific components in a system (for example, instructions may output logging information to appear on screen). When an application contains instrumentation code, it can be managed using a management tool. Instrumentation is necessary to review the performance of the application. Instrumentation approaches can be of two types: Source instrumentation and binary instrumentation.

Output

In programming, instrumentation means the ability of an application to incorporate: