visual basic 6.0 with 6501

[Nilkrub]

I have a customer that uses VB6 with an existing 6025 DAQ card. They wish to add several IO points and use NI USB 6501 devices as TTL interface. The existing 6025 card can handle the extra analog inputs. The existing VB code is very large and customer does not wish to rewrite it. After reading about NI-DAQmax it looks much different from the older versions I have used in the past.

I am looking for suggestions on how to approach the problem. A second application is possible in VB2005.net or C# passing data back to old application via files. Rewrite with Labview is my first choice, not an option at this point.

[Speedy_Badger]

Hello Nilkrub,

I assume from your previous post that you are used to programming with Traditional DAQ. The 6025 is supported by both Traditional DAQ and DAQmx, however the USB 6501 is only supported by DAQmx. As a result you will have to at least write the portion of the application that uses the 6501 using the DAQmx API. The good news is that you can use DAQmx in either VB6 or VS2005 .NET. DAQmx is also much more functional and easier to implement than its traditional counterpart.

The only caveat to keep in mind is that only one driver can be used by any device at a time. This means that you can either program both the 6025 and the 6501 in DAQmx, or program the 6025 in Traditional DAQ and the 6501 in DAQmx. You cannot however control the 6025 with both Traditional DAQ and DAQmx at the same time.

Here is a link that describes the advantages of DAQmx over Tradtional DAQ.

The following knowledgebase article describes where to find the .NET examples on your computer.

NI-DAQmx, NI-VISA and NI-488.2 .NET Example Locations

Another knowledgebase article describes how to use DAQmx examples in Visual Basic 6.0.

NI-DAQmx Examples for Visual Basic 6.0

Finally, here is a tutorial on migrating from Traditional DAQ to DAQmx. This tutorial is based in LabVIEW, however the ideas can be applied the text-based analog.

NI-DAQmx Examples for Visual Basic 6.0

Finally here are some great links on how to use DAQmx.

Learn 10 Functions in NI-DAQmx and Handle 80 Percent of Your Data Acquisition Applications

Complete Data Acquisition Tutorial

Programming NI-DAQ in Text-Based Languages

Hopefully this will get your started with this application.