Digital I/O Pattern (4xOut 2xIn) with PCMCIA 6036E in LabView?

[Toko]

Hello,

I´m using a 6036E PCMCIA card on my laptop and I want to set up communication with a sensor chip via its SPI interface.

Therefore I need to send/receive Digital I/O patterns (simultaneously 4xDig Out and 2x Dig In) with a frequency of 500kHz to 1.2MHz.

Is the 6036E PCMCIA card capable of performing such an operation? 

I tried to implement a software timed I/O pattern in LabView (set each bit, wait 2msec, set the next bit, wait again and so on), but the max frequency I can reach is much too slow.

Thanks for your help!

Tobias 

[Christian Mergl]

Hey Tobias,

No, the E-Series boards just provide static I/O, which means that you are not able to reach such high rates.

In terms of SPI or interfacing in general you might want to thing about a FPGA platform....

Christian

[Toko]

Hello Christian,

although that´s bad news, thank you for your help! FPGA looks very interesting as it seems very flexible, but we can´t buy such a system at the moment...

Is there another way to send / receive 4xDigOut and 2xDigIn? For example, would it be possibility to use an external Main clock (500kHz to 1.2Mhz) and synchronize 3XDigOut and 2xDigIn to that clock?

Best regards,

Tobias

[Dennis_Knutson]

If you were to buy a card that supported an external clock source and hardware timed I/O, then yes, you could use an external clock. As already mentioned, your board is software timed.

Have you considered the 8451?

[David S.]

Hi Tobias -

In addition to Dennis's recommendation for the 8451, I'd like to shill my Reference Design for using a DAQmx device to communicate over SPI: Serial Protocol Communication Reference Application for Digital Waveform Devices

If you find the funding to upgrade your DAQ device to an M-series (62xx) product, you can use this whitepaper and the SDW library to quickly and reliably build a SPI application with it.

[Christian Mergl]

I would also suggest to use an M-Series board where you can drive the DIOs up to 10MHz, btw. they are cheaper then FPGA hardware.

And with Davids Reference Architecture you allready have the code and save development time!

Christian