25 pin, how to acquire data

[wujunwei]

Hi, I have a furnace and controller, now I'd like to control it by LabVIEW, but the controller only has a 25-pin port for data I/O, I don't know whether it is possible for me to realize the function, and how to realize?

Anybody has similiar program which can share with me, I am a beginner need help, thanks.

I appreciate your suggestions greatly.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Pretty hard to help you if you don't at least provide the make and model of the furnace/controller. Maybe, if you provide that, someone on the forum has experience with it and can provide an answer. Otherwise, you will have erad the manual from vendor and determine it yourself. You will likely need some sort of digital I/O board to communicate with it but that's just speculating.

[wujunwei]

Thanks a lot.

It will be great if there is any manual for reference. However, the furnace and controller were made by previous students, now they left university.

I have heard that one cable can connect to the PC for indicate and control the temperature, but I don't know which kind of cable is possible.

The attachment is the interface, hopefully you could give me some information.

Thanks a lot

[Dennis_Knutson]

If they left without leaving any documentation, I'd have to say you are up the proverbial creek. There is no way of knowing what is connected to some generic 25 pin connecter just be looking at it. Just about anything could be wired there. You would have to trace the wires that are connected on the other side and determine what they do in the circuit. That means recreating the schematic as the starting point.

[T_Marsh]

Hello,

I have to agree with Dennis on this one.  The only other thing I could recommend would be if you have a program or something else that already communicates with the controller at the moment.  If you did then you could try and watch the lines with an oscilloscope and try and deduce the communication protocol and what is happening.  Also, maybe you can find some label on the controller about who the manufacturer is and then try and look up information that way.  If this is a controller that the previous students designed and built themselves, or if it’s some custom implementation of any sort then you’re going to be incredibly hard pressed to figure out how to communicate with it without completely reverse engineering it.

Good luck, and remember to document anything you find for future students.

[wujunwei]

Dennis, Travis, 

Thanks  a lot for your warm help! I was so careless and made a mistake.

I double checked the furnace again, which was one old product of ATS. Then I opened the controller and called ATS for help, now waiting for their reply.

without your suggestion, maybe I am still confused. later I will try my best to keep everything in order later.