Is it possible to get programmatically the number of counters on a device?

[Andy L.]

I would like to find out how many counters my device has, so that I can find two counters which are not activated for the measurement which I can use for "timestamping" if I use an external clock (i.e. a quadrature encoder) as clock pulse for the measurement.

Is there a way to get this information? I usually work with DAQmx and would prefer to get this information this way (if there is no other way than with traditional DAQ, I would also use such a solution).

Thank you for your time ...

[MikeG]

Thank you for contacting National Instruments.

I�m not sure I fully understand your question, but if you are using an E-Series device, then you will have two counters available for your use, regardless of any AO, IO, or digital operation being performed simultaneously. If you are using another device, like a digital board, you will likely have more (4 or 8). You can find this information on the specifications sheet or in the manual.

There are additional counters on some boards beyond the number explicitly advertised on the specifications sheet, but these are automatically allocated and used by the driver. They are not something you can access directly. The driver handles management of these behind the scenes and doesn�t expose functionality to the user.


Regards,
Mike G
National Instruments Support

[Andy L.]

Hi Mike

Thank you for the time for answering.

I try to make myself more clear.

I do know how many counters my devices have - but how can I make it clear to my programm?
I would like to find out how many counters in my whole setup are not used for the measurement. Because I want to use the programm I am writing for many different combinations of different devices I need to know how many counters are available (as a summ of all devices)- and together with the information of how many counters I need for the data aquisition I am able to find two counters I can use for "timestamping" the measurement if I am using for example a Quadrature Encoder as external clock.

I don't know if I could make myself more clear and didn't confuse you too much, but a
nyway: thanks for the help

Andy

[Mike G.]

Andy,

I think I understand what you are asking for now. Unfortunately, there is no native capability to do this, either in Traditional DAQ, or DAQmx.

In your LabVIEW program, you could monitor which counters were in use and subtract those from the total counters available, but you would basically have to keep track of this yourself. In other words, you would have to constantly update a running tally any time you started or ended a counter task.

Mike G.