Reading Position Data to File

[johntfoster]

I have a PCI 6601 Counter/Timer board successfully installed and have been reading position data in realtime from an encoder. I used the example included in Labview 6i to do this. I need to record this data to a file, not just see the position indicated on a dial. What is the best way to go about this. Do I need to used buffered counting to achieve this accuaretly.

[Tiptop]

Hello,

There are several ways that you can accomplish writing your data to a file. Your first decision is whether or not you need to know the time between each sample. If you do not need to know this information, and knowing the order of samples is enough, then you do not need buffering. However, if you need to know how much time occurred between each sample, then buffering is the way to go.

Your next choice is when to write data to file. There are two main ways for this application. One way is to write to a file every time you get new data, however, this will take a little more processing time, but conserves memory. The next way is to hold all of the samples in memory and write them to file after the acquisition is done. This allows for a faster progra
m, but consumes more memory.

There are many ways to accomplish each of these goals. For file I/O examples, take a look at the data loggers section of the examples in 6i. Just let us know if you have any further questions.

Best regards,
Justin T.
National Instruments