LabVIEW and Spider8 , school project

[GerdW]

Hi Wilfried,

starting that old LV7.1 will solve that issue :smileyink:

[Wilfried_71]

Thanks a lot.

[Grasman]

heey wilfried, i used labview 8.2. Labview8.2 is the latest version which can read the labview 4.0 files. But dont get too excited, the examplefiles which you get are terrible. You have to wirte a new labviewprogramm using all the Spider8.vi`s, i just managed to communicate between Labview8.2 and the Spider8 but the communication is still not optimum. I`m still working on this programm and hoping that it will work properly sometime soon 😛

[Wilfried_71]

Really ? Did you ask to somebody else ? It's strange that nobody managed to make the spider8 working with LV ?

[Ray.R]

part of the project is to learn LabVIEW, right?  😉

[Grasman]

Heey everyone.  Sorry that I am responding so late to this thread but I managed to communicate with the Spider8 properly!

PS: It only works using parallel ports (or parallel to USB) but not serial, it seems that the serial (RS232) communication is too slow for the Spider8. So if you`re doing high speed measurements then don`t use serial communication because its rubbish and you`ll screw up ur measurements.

I made a terribly huge program for the use of the Spider8 but the vi in the appendix contains only the basics which you need to communicate properly with the spider8. You are able to create spider8-setups with the Spider8 setup program. You need to create a couple of setups because the labviewprogram needs to load these setups for the right measurements.

The output data is given by the vi ACQread, its a 2D-array:

the colomns are the channels: colomn 1 is the first activated channel, colomn 2 is the second activated channel, and so on.

the number of rows it has depends on the number of values you measure per channel per loop. (if you set Values per Chan to 25, it has 25 rows).

In the blockdiagram of the program there is also a little bit of explanation. Well this sure worked for me and I hope that other people which have to use the Spider8 can use this program as well, it`ll save you a lot of time.

Byebye!

[GerdW]

Hi Grasman,

it would be fine to actually attach your final version

(Then we would possibly agree on that "Solution found" marker...)

Message Edited by GerdW on 11-25-2009 04:44 PM

[Grasman]

wops sorry, here it is 😛

[RavensFan]

You will need to post more than that.  The .lvproj  is not your entire project.  It is just the top level file that defines what VI's and devices are a part of your project.  It is best to zip of your entire project folder and post that.

Message Edited by Ravens Fan on 11-25-2009 11:07 AM

[Grasman · Accepted solution]

lol,

here are all the files you need to communicate with the spider8. I already explained the output array which is given by the vi ACQread... The only thing you need to do before you start the program is putting all the spider8 dll files in to your windows/system directory because the spider8 labview files need to call them via library function nodes.

After that you have to put the labiew librarys (in the map: "Spider8 labview files") from the spider8 into the user.lib map of your labview directory. Just like in this picture here:

[URL=http://img209.imageshack.us/i/spider8lib.jpg/][IMG]http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/3844/spider8lib.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

The entire project, vi`s, librarys and dll files are in the winrar file which is appended to this post. Hope this will help all you guys which need to use the Spider8. Thank you and good bye :D!

PS: the link below is a helpfile which will help you explain all the spider8.vi`s and the dll-functions and possible errors.

http://www.2shared.com/file/9454354/1a3faec0/Sp8_DLL_Help.html

Message Edited by Grasman on 11-26-2009 02:01 AM