Data Acquisition Idea Exchange

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If NI already has the product, please let me know. I need it in my project. If otherwise, I would like to suggest NI to develope one based its NI-9234 and WLS-9163. It can be readily developed by just remove three channels of the NI-9234 and make a smaller version of WLS-9163 for one channel. I would like the product be one unit to achieve a small size. The one channel wireless data aquisition module will have two imporatnt advantages: 1) much smaller size, therefore can be fit into difficult locations; 2) much lower power consumption, therefore can make much longer recording. These two advantages are essential for wireless measurement, thus the product will have good market potential.

While in the development environment it is easy to get a reference to a Fieldpoint IO channel - just drag and drop it from the target in the project file. Things are much more cumbersome if you need to create such a refnum dynamically. (If you are making software that should be possible to just copy onto different controllers (without involving LabVIEW) and then configure to match the available/required IO, static refnums are not usable. )

To dynamically get access to an IO point in a built general purpose application you currently have to save and download an iak file to the controller from Measurement and Automation Studio and then open that iak file in your code (Using FP Open) to get the server reference you need as an input to the FP CreateTag function. The need for FP Open and the iak file to create a server refnum is the main problem.

If FP Create Tag could do its job without any iak-file (e.g. just with the IP of the controller as an additional input)...OR even better - if there was a Create Fieldpoint IO Refnum VI avilable (no such today!?) that took the controller IP (use local if not wired), device name (or ID number) and channel name (or ID number)..then things would be much more flexible and intuitive.

There is one function that allows you to address channels just by the use of slot and channel numbers - and that is the Input Range function (which should not be called the input range either by the way as it could be an output...), so another good solution would be to offer that same functionality for the IO read and write functions.

usb-6008 PGA

Allow programmatic MAX Calibration.

Problem: When creating large numbers of virtual channels, the calibraton of these channels can be very time consuming and cumbersome. In large applications there can be literally hundreds of channels requiring days to calibrate.

Calibration equipment these days can be purchased with programmable capability or remote communication. Having low level functions available in Labview to calibrate MAX virtual channels programmatically would greatly reduce the time needed for calibration and reduce the potential errors of calibrating each point individually. It would also be useful to view the calibration data and scaling data from MAX in the Labview environment.

Standard wiring examples.

I'm not sure who reads this, but I'm not seeing any feedback in the forum so I thought I'd post up here. This may seem like a simple thing, but hopefully my pain will be someone else gain. I messed with this off and on for two months before I finally figured it out. It's probably obvious to those who work with this equipment every day and have EE degrees, but not so much to those of us who do not.

Please see http://forums.ni.com/t5/Multifunction-DAQ/Measuring-220VAC-with-CompactDAQ/td-p/1145956 for a description of the issues I was having.

Some will tell me to "search"... well, I did. ...and everywhere I looked all I found was that I needed to measure from the power leg to ground. All of the examples either were only measuring 120 which is fine since what you have is one power leg and neutral... which is basically ground! So those numbers come out fine. Or they were for 3 phase, which I don't use currently. BUT when you try and measure anything with two power legs (basically anything between 208VAC to 240 VAC) the numbers don't work out right if you try to measure between each power leg to ground and then try to recombine them and plug them into the Power VI's. Not one place that I looked did it tell me that I need to measure both power legs across a single channel. I only finally tried it because I'd done pretty much everything else. I know this is pretty basic stuff, but when all you give me says one thing... that's what we do. Just trying to help others.

Thanks,

Chad

Hardware Front Panel

I would really like to see a user configurable hardware front panel that integrates with LabVIEW. The panel would connect to a computer via USB. National Instruments could sell different hardware controls such as pushbuttons, LED's, switches, LCD panels for graphs, rotory encoded switches, slide switches and potentiometers, LCD indicators for text and numbers, etc.

LabVIEW would discover which panels are connected and which hardware controls are available in those panels. The user could then drop them as terminals on the block diagram and use them as normal.

Another option for the panel could be an embedded computer running LabVIEW so that the whole thing can be stand alone.

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As a user of the SCXI 1000 with a 1302 board, I had a lot of difficulty finding information on the pinout of my board. The 1302 is a direct link to the 6220 DAQ card on my computer. When I first looked for the 1302, I could find very little information on it. By adding a few windows and commands to the M&AE, I probably would have been able to solve my problem in minutes instead of days.

Solution

A. Being able to add boards which link to pinouts of the computer's DAQ and treat them as a board.

B. Have a list of pinout boards which can link to the DAQ. Since I was dealing with a 1302 which has 34 pins instead of 64 (or something close to that) I had difficulty finding the information on the pinouts. It was far easier to find the pinout of the 6220.

It could be I was a little annoyed at the amount of time that I spent on finding information on the 1302, but it took me far longer to find the information than it should have. This data should be built in.

As far as I know, the DAQ-mx has provicion to generate the COUNTER output or to read digital input triggered by the change detection event.

It would be nice if one is capable of generating the DIGITAL output on accurance of change detection event.(i.e. it can be triggered):smileytongue:

Also digital output must be allowed to generate the waveforms which are triggered by any of the digital input lines.

If possible then COUNTER counts should be available to user in LABVIEW after triggering, to synchronise the various digital input/output to counter state/count.Since some of the actions are COUNT dependent.

NI USB-TC01 ambient temperature

INSTRUMENT SPECIFICATIONS

R&D , LABVIEW,

NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS.

FROM

Mithun Raj .T,

Pranavam, Kalluvilla , Kariyam,

Sreekaryam P.O, Trivandrum- 17,

Kerala, India.

We are a group of B.tech project students from SIST , Kerala ,India. We are doing a project on ICU using LABVIEW in Indian Space Research Organisation.

While we doing our project we found the nessecity of following :

> A functions that provides range or specification of the addressed device so that the programmer has an overall knowledge of the addressed device & its range of operation.

> A suggestion window at the top left when some error occurs.

So if our suggestions are good please kindly provide us a good idea certificate from NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS,that will help us a lot. So kindly consider our request.

Your's affectionatly,

Ahammed Shiraz A.R

Anish .S

Dileesh .S

Mithun Raj .T

Proposal : If left unwired, the DAQmx Create Channel Minimum and Maximum Value inputs would default to the maximum value for whatever physical channel was wired. Currently for example, AO Voltage defaults to +/- 10 V. Some devices such as the USB 6008 are limited to 0 to +5 V. For programs that allow for different daq devices to be used and changed at run time, one does not know ahead of time what the allowable input limits will be and cannot be assigned. Is it possible to use the DAQmx Device property I/O Type:Analog Output:Voltage:Ranges to obtain the limits and then wire that result however this involves extra coding to make use of them. If the DAQmx Create Channel is used at many places in a vi it becomes cumbersome to have to extract the property for every instance of use. i.e. even if DAQmx Create Channel is done once, another call to it does not retain the values previously set. A solution would be for DAQmx Create Channel to simply obtain the minimum and maximum values based on whatever physical channel was wired to it and use them.

Take advantage of open-source hardware

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Data Acquisition Idea Exchange

Single channel Wi Fi (wireless) data acquisition module

Encoder Count Number of lines between samples

Make it easier to programmatically create Fieldpoint IO refnums or tags

usb-6008 PGA

NI USB-443x _5 channels with software-selectable IEPE signal conditioning (0 or 2.1 mA)

Allow programmatic MAX Calibration.

Standard wiring examples.

Hardware Front Panel

Additional Pinout Charts Built Into Measurement & Automation Explorer

Facility to generate "DIGITAL OUTPUT" on occurance of "change detection event".

NI USB-TC01 ambient temperature

INSTRUMENT SPECIFICATIONS

DAQmx Create Channel Minimum and Maximum Value default to largest possible for the wired physical channel

Take advantage of open-source hardware