Pickering Interfaces has launched Test System Architect (TSA), a free, online tool designed to solve one of automated test engineering’s least glamorous yet most consequential problems: the signal path.
I recently sat down with the company to learn how TSA brings together system configuration, schematic capture, and cable/harness design into a single, browser-based environment.
TSA is a direct evolution of Pickering’s Cable Design Tool, which has been in use in various forms since 2016 and heavily rewritten and expanded over the last seven years. That tool became central to many customers’ workflows.
Keith Moore, Founder & CEO of Pickering Interfaces, explained the origin story: “It’s a new web tool we put together. It’s based off technology we developed quite a few years ago for [the] cable design tool, which a lot of our customers love. We found that people building test systems struggle with documentation … about 25% of the time in designing a test system is spent on the interconnection.”
Originally starting as an internal tool for sales and support staff, TSA evolved as Pickering realised customers needed the same common toolset. A dedicated development team has been working on it as a formal project for the past three years.
Kyle Voosen, Product Marketing Manager at Pickering Interfaces framed TSA against the five stages he sees in almost every automated production test system:
- System intent – defining requirements, architecture, and preferred instruments
- Selecting and mapping hardware – choosing switches, routing signals, and documenting paths, often in unwieldy spreadsheets
- Custom design – software, fixture PCBs, and DUT interfaces
- Validation and debug – wrestling with ‘bird’s nest’ cabling and signal integrity issues
- Production and replication – copying systems across lines, factories, or continents with consistent configurations
At each stage, signal-path shortcuts compound into late, expensive failures. Many teams accept this as inherent.
“We talk to them … it’s a quarter of the time they spend on the tester … designing and debugging the signal path. But you almost see it as, ‘this is just part and parcel of the job,’ not realising that there could be a better way not to think about it,” notes Voosen.
TSA is Pickering’s answer: a structured, shared environment that enforces clarity from the first sketch of intent through to the cable build instructions given to a technician or external harness house.
Three core views: configuration, schematic, cable
At the heart of TSA are three tightly linked views:
1. System Configuration – define endpoints and architecture:
- Add PXI chassis, switching modules, third-party instruments (e.g., NI DMMs), and DUT connectors
- Group elements into subsystems (e.g., RF, high-voltage, or DC test blocks)
2. Schematic Design – map the signal path visually:
- Connect DUT pins, switching modules, and measurement devices in a familiar schematic environment
- Use features like “link pins” and “auto linking” to rapidly define large sets of connections, especially for high-pin-count DUTs
3. Cable & Harness Design – turn the schematic into buildable hardware:
- TSA infers connector types and recommends appropriate mating connectors and backshells
- Engineers specify cable type, gauge, length, and screening, then generate a complete set of build instructions for technicians or external suppliers
“This is exactly what our own technicians use internally to build out the cable,” Voosen noted.
TSA runs as a web tool hosted in Pickering’s private Cloud, accessible from any modern browser – laptop, tablet, or desktop, independent of operating system. A dashboard view allows engineers to:
- See all designs and shared projects
- Collaborate via threaded comments and messaging
- Share projects with colleagues or vendors with view, comment, edit, or co-owner permissions
- Generate PDFs to justify purchases or communicate system design internally
This is intended to solve a familiar problem: designs scattered across email threads, whiteboards, slide decks, and ad-hoc spreadsheets, with no single source of truth that can be revisited years later.
“It’s not just time, it’s also just commonality … a common tool set that people use within both Pickering and their customers, rather than using different things and all the confusion that brings … and years down the road [they can] go back and just replicate it again,” said Voosen.
Customers can model and use third-party instruments and custom hardware just as easily as Pickering modules. For Moore, the bigger prize is trust: “For me, it’s Pickering being held in a position of trust, that we can do these things for them and they trust us … if they have faith in a commercial company that we behave rightly and ethically, then that, for me, is success.”
And because TSA is web-based, Pickering can roll out improvements continuously.
Near-term roadmap items include:
- AI-assisted product selection and advisory chat to help engineers reason about their system and endpoint requirements
- Signal performance insight, using known connectors and routes to estimate degradation, especially at higher frequencies
- Integration with Switch Path Manager, bringing programming and routing control into the same environment
- Private-Cloud and on-prem deployment options for customers who cannot place IP in a public Cloud
Solving a problem nobody talks about
Ultimately, Pickering sees TSA as a way to shine light on a critical but often ignored part of the test engineering workflow.
Summing up his excitement about the launch, Voosen said: “I think we are addressing a common problem in test and measurement that no one’s talking about. I’m looking forward to getting that feedback from customers that [we’re] solving a problem they didn’t know there was a solution for.”
If TSA can reliably help reclaim a sizable portion of the 25% of engineering time currently lost to messy, error-prone signal-path work, Pickering’s quiet focus on the unglamorous wiring between instruments might end up reshaping how test systems are designed and maintained.
Test System Architect is available now as a free resource for the test engineering community. Learn more at: pickeringtest.com/tsa
