Arduino/LabVIEW acquiring input and controlling stepper simultaneously

[moons657]

Hey, I am doing my final year project for Electronic engineering and I am trying to control 2 stepper motors with labVIEW. A microphone will be placed on a platform that the stepper motors control and the position of the platform will adjust depending on sound levels read in from the microphone. To control the stepper motors I am going to use 2 stepper motor controllers from Sparkfun.com.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10267

These controller require a pulse input. I was going to use a DAQ 6008 but I am not sure if this can output a pulse?? I was also thinking of using the Arduino to control the stepper motors which would work perfect with the controllers but would it be able to control the motors while acquiring an analogue voltage from the microphone?

I appreciate any help you can give.

[Kev_R]

Hi moons657,

Thank you for your forum post. My name is Kevin and I am an application engineer for National Instruments. 

I understand that you are wanting some advice on how to control your stepper motor; Arduino or NI USB 6008.

Here is a link to an example of how to create a pulsed output from a 6008. 

Link

Arduinos natively have a PWM output on board, but you cannot program in LabVIEW on the Arduino only C code. 

Let me Know how you get on 

Kind Regards

[LV_Pro · Accepted solution]

But you can use LabVIEW to work with the Arduino using the toolkit described here https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019TmpSAE&l=en-US

[moons657]

@LV_Pro. Yes this is what I am doing now. There is an example VI in there to work with Stepper motors with the controller I mentioned so I have to build a VI with 2 of these and sound is going to move the motors. 

I still have to finalise exactly what way the sound will interact with the motors though.