How to create timer to delay On/Off

[agon]

I am currently using the evaluation version of LabView to figure out if LabView is a good choice for an application I would normally use ladder logic for. I am trying to find examples on how to do the following, any advice would be appreciated:

-Timer for delaying On condition
-Timer for delaying Off condition
-Counter
-Latching circuit

[National_Burritos]

Hi agon,

Are you going to be using hardware for your application, or is this all software control? On the software side, generally speaking those types of functions are all very possible - though the how and the nuances are all going to be application specific. If you are using our DAQ devices, those can definitely be done, depending on what types of delays and accuracy you are looking for, and whether you want precise hardware timing or or are okay with software timing.

Based on whether you are looking to use DAQ or not (and any details you are willing to offer about your end-goal), I can definitely point you to some great stuff to get started/help you in your evaluation.

[agon]

Hi Rahul, I would use Industrial RIO for this application, the cRIO-9074 controller and about 12 different RIO modules along with the appropriate chassis. The end goal of the application is to control a machine (a vacuum chamber with pumps, valves, pressure gauges, etc). I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have to help me evaluate LabView/NI for such an application.

[National_Burritos]

Hi agon,

From my experience, the cRIO should definitely be able to do that - though that would of course depends on the specifics of your application. In order to properly evaluate this system, you would likely need hardware. Have you been in contact with your local field sales engineer or inside sales engineer in Austin regarding your interest? If not, feel free to send me a private mesage with contact information (name, e-mail, phone number, company) and I can get one of them to get in touch with you. They would have more information about this, but we could likely set up a demo or something similar so that you can get a good visual feel for how LabVIEW/cRIO works and how it could be scaled up to your application.

A great resource for now is the cRIO Developers Guide: http://www.ni.com/pdf/products/us/fullcriodevguide.pdf. This discusses high-level benefits of the cRIO's Real-Time OS (namely determinism and thread priority setting) and FPGA (very fast, user customizeable logic, no VHDL programming, parallelism) and then details of how this is implemented in LabVIEW (which may or may not become too low-level depending on how familiar you are with LabVIEW).

As I touched upon above, evaluating us based on your application description would be difficult without hardware to play around with or see in action. However, the Developers Guide will show you how we communicate with I/O on a RIO and an idea of control code you can implement.