Do I need to use a PCI6602 or a simpler DIO card?

[AdamS]

I have to delay a signal for about 1 ms from a sensor to trigger a vision camera taking pics at a rate of ~15 parts/sec. We will have 10 cameras running off one PC (equipped w/ several PCI8252's)... so 10 signals have to be delayed... the delay has to be adjustable (in .0001s increments) from the front panel too. Do I need to get a timer card (like a PCI6602) or will software based timing using a DIO card (like a PCI6503) suffice?

[sheen]

Adam,

Software timing in the millisecond range can be attained doing software timing alone, however being able to adjust timing in the .1 ms range is only possible in a real time environment. In LabVIEW 7.1 NI introduced Timed Loops for this capability, but you also have options in the Time & Dialog function palette.

If you are not programming for or in a real time environment, a timer card such as one in the 660x family, or a Multifunction DAQ card with counters (E-series, M-series, etc.) will be your best bet.

[AdamS]

Thanks for the reply... I think we're steering towards Real Time... in that case, will the non-timer DAQ cards be sufficient to handle all this timing (in the millisecond range)?
Also, I realized that the input for the timer MAY go high again (depending on how many parts we wind up dispensing per second) while it is already running from the previous signal. I suppose that this would require more than one timer allocation per input, taking our count up to 20 timers. Still okay? Am I making the correct assumption here? Thanks for your advice, it's much appreciated.

[AdamS]

Alright, one more question while I'm at it... I'm a newbie... assuming I'm using LV RT, will I be able to achieve this level of accuracy (ms range) if I use a software trigger for my camera acquisition too?

Also, I'll be crunching quite a bit of data (vision analysis, a volume calculation, some SPC charting, displaying all 10 images, exporting to an Excel report, etc.) from 10 Firewire cameras at once... Again, assuming LV RT, What are the limits on my computer processor (I'll be using a min 3 GHz P4)? Is there a way to calculate this? Is this even an issue?