Hardware Reccomendation Request

[Popeye2000]

Good day,

I am currently working on a post-grad project for the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering Department at the University of Florida.  I have built a Nuclear Control Panel Simulator, and am currently looking for a software and programming solution, which depends on some hardware issues.

Currently what I am looking to do is provide a manual interface into the software using momentary push button switches (about 😎 as well as a shutdown switch.  I spoke to one of the Ph.D students in our college, and he suggested that I contact NI about this matter from hardware he had once used, but could no longer locate.  Apparently this hardware detected when a switch was closed (I am assuming the hardware interface has a complete loop and detects when that circuit is opened or closed).  I would like to attach a variable speed counter to that signal, which from what I have heard about Lab View upto this point, is pretty easy once I have a signal input to apply it with.  I would apply approximately a 3 inch/minute simulated rod withdrawal movement while the momentary pushbutton is being pushed.  I am currently looking at Lab View to run this simulator, and have a few questions.

My questions:

1)  Does NI have this signal interpreter which I have discussed above available for use with Labview, how many inputs can you put into one module, and will all the inputs be available with the software simultaneously, how does it interface to a computer, and can I have a link to a description and/or ordering information?

2) Can Labview operate simultaneously on two PC's with inputs to one another via an ethernet connection?  To be more specific, if I am running two PC's connected by ethernet,  I would want to run LabView on each PC, but would need the two of them to communicate with one another refreshing information to one another constantly.  Is this possible?

Thank you for your time, and any solution you provide me with.

Maxwell Minch

[Laura F.]

Hello Maxwell,

I will help you out with the hardware side of your project, since that is what I am most familiar with.  I think the easiest way to know if a push button is open or closed would be to use a Data Acquisition (DAQ) device.  You would connect one side of the push button to the +5V provided by the device and the other side to a digital input.  Then, when the button is closed, you would read a digital high (5V) on your digital input line.  Most of our DAQ devices have digital lines.  They also have analog inputs, analog outputs (optional) and counters.  If you do not need this functionality, you could consider a digital device.  If you need to check the state of your push buttons at a fast rate, say over 1 Khz, then you should get a device that supports correlated (hardware timed) digital input and output.  I am not sure what you mean by a variable speed counter so I may not be addressing that part of the question. 

Let me know if you have additional questions about this.

Thanks!

Laura

[AESulzer]

Maxwell,

I'm happy to speak to your second (LabVIEW) question. You actually have a couple of options for communicating between two computers in LabVIEW via ethernet. The first and simplest is DataSocket, and I have included a link to a tutorial here. DataSocket is pretty much our own abstraction of TCP/IP and makes setting up the communication a little simpler. If you prefer the details, there are also explicit TCP/IP and UDP VIs that you could use instead, and I have included a link to a tutorial on the TCP/IP ones here. If you search around on our website, you can find a wealth of more information on any of these concepts. There are also examples on each of these that ship with LabVIEW -- just go to Help>>Find Examples and search for the appropriate terms under the search tab.

Kind Regards,