Interfacing and controlling Alicat Mass Flow Controllers from LabVIEW

[Fuel Cell Matt]

Everyone,

I am trying to write a LabVIEW program that can control and display values from a bank of Alicat 16 Series Mass & Volumetric Precision Gas Flow controllers. However, I am having quite a bit of difficulty (I am a rather novice LabVIEW user). I noted that in other threads some files were made available for Brooks mass flow controllers; has anyone tried controlling mass flow controllers made by Alicat?

Thanks for your time and help.

[Al M]

Fuel Cell Matt,

Unfortunately we do not currently have any LabVIEW drivers written for Alicat equipment.  You should be able to create your own, however, in LabVIEW.  Here are some resources to do that depending on your communications bus:

Serial:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzone.nsf/webcategories/96CE2B01326A20FB8625688B0074AB17

VISA

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzone.nsf/webcategories/C985342EC31A2CCA8625688B00749A21

GPIB

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzone.nsf/webcategories/5B6B37F88B2178118625688B00734EE1

Getting started in LabVIEW:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/learningcenter.nsf/webmain/51739EA30FAB12F8862570920065734B

General LabVIEW development:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzone.nsf/webcategories/2E4161187E3DEB30862568660020BCC8?opendocument&node=200067_us

Al M.

Applications Engineering

National Instruments

[Matty_B]

I hate to awake old posts, but I am just beggining a project attempting to control the Alicat MC series flow controllers with Labview and I am a bit of a novice and was hoping to find more helpful posts on this subject.  Is there any guidance you can give me on how to go about this?  I'm using Labview 8.6.

[Miguel_F]

Hi Matty B,

Have you tried using the driver from their site?

http://alicatscientific.com/devicedrivers.php

[Matty_B]

Exactly what I was looking for (more or less)!  The controller manuel said very little about support for software control, I didn't think to explore their site more. Thanks so much Miguel F!