LabVIEW and Spider8 , school project

[Grasman]

Heey all,

I have a little problem and i hope that one of you guys could help me with this problem.

I`m trying to achieve data from a Spider8 with a laptop equiped with LabVIEW, i do this by using a USB to serial cable, instead of a parrallel cable.

I defined this USB to serial cable as a COM-port :

[URL=http://img59.imageshack.us/i/devicemanager.png/][IMG]http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4613/devicemanager.png[/IMG][/URL]

next i installed the spider8 software. After that i tested the communication between the laptop and the spider8 by using a altitude sensor, this sensor has an ouput from 0V to 10V. The communication was perfect between the Spider8 and the laptop as you can see below, (i putted the sensor in channel 0)

[URL=http://img14.imageshack.us/i/spider8setup.png/][IMG]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/6200/spider8setup.png[/IMG][/URL]

Now i copied the Spider32.dll file and copied it into the "WINDOWS\system" and "WINDOWS\system32" directory so that labview can see these .dll files.

[URL=http://img25.imageshack.us/i/spiderdll.png/][IMG]http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/7715/spiderdll.png[/IMG][/URL]

[URL=http://img17.imageshack.us/i/spiderdll2.png/][IMG]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7489/spiderdll2.png[/IMG][/URL]

Now i used the example .vi`s from www.hbm.com to try and communicate between LabVIEW 8.2 and Spider8. But EVERYTIME i try to run this example i get the following error:

[URL=http://img134.imageshack.us/i/fehler1.png/][IMG]http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/198/fehler1.png[/IMG][/URL]

The vi called S8_InitAll is in the very beginning of the programm, take a look at the blockdiagram of this example from HBM:

[URL=http://img269.imageshack.us/i/blokdiagram1.png/][IMG]http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/2316/blokdiagram1.png[/IMG][/URL]

when case structure is false, this vi gives the error:

[URL=http://img143.imageshack.us/i/blokdiagram2.png/][IMG]http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/6060/blokdiagram2.png[/IMG][/URL]

This is the vi S8_InitAll :  (frontpanel, blockdiagram and the "call library function")

[URL=http://img12.imageshack.us/i/s8initall.png/][IMG]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8415/s8initall.png[/IMG][/URL]

I seriously dont have any idea how to solve this, everytime i run the example-program i get the same error. Did i do something wrong with the dll files of is it something else? Please help, thank you !

[Grasman]

Someone help please? you can just press the URL to see the printscreens.

[GerdW]

Hi Grasman,

do you really expect someone to click through this tons of links?

Why not simply attach the vi(s) here in the forum? And state your LV version!

[ninlmartijn]

Hello Grasman,

thank you for your post on our webforum. One important thing to know is if Labview can communicate with your serial port at all? You can open an example to try this (help => examples => hardware in and output => serial => basic serial). Mostly these kind of products are using NI Visa for communication between your VI and serial port. You can find more information about VISA and third party serial ports using this link.

[billko]

---

GerdW wrote:

Hi Grasman,

do you really expect someone to click through this tons of links?

Why not simply attach the vi(s) here in the forum? And state your LV version!

---

LOL, Gerd!  I think this is probably his first post to the forum.  🙂

[Ray.R]

Have tried to communicate with the spider using something very basic like HyperTerminal?  or some other terminal emulator software?

That should be your very first step.

R

[Grasman]

Heey everyone, thank you for your support.

I have the drivers and labview files i used attached to this message.

I now have the Spider8 communicating with Labview but the signal im getting is not good.

I used an TRS50  sensor for input in the spider8, the datasheet of this sensor is also attached to this reply.

This sensor should give me a nice signal from 0V (pin untouched) to 10V (pin pressed all the way in).

I can see this signal working fine on the Spider8 setup, but on labview it looks a bit different:

[URL=http://img25.imageshack.us/i/pieksignalen.png/][IMG]http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2003/pieksignalen.th.png[/IMG][/URL]

In the beginning of this graph i started pressing on the pin of this sensor until it was all the way pressed in. As you can see this is clearly not a normal signal, i have these weird peaks constantly in it. These peaks are going from -99999999 until +4.8~4.9 and when i start pressing the pin of the sensor the upper peak starts to rise.

Does anyone know how to solve this problem, so i can get a nice decent signal from the sensor?

PS: The time it takes from when i pressed the needle to when i see the results on the chart are really slow 😞, plus i can only run the program once, after that it needs to be restart for some other weird reason.

Thanks everbody for your help.

[Grasman]

sorry guys i forgot to add the datasheet for the sensor, here it is

[Ray.R]

Are you familiar with signal conditioning?  Adding hardware to filter, amplify the signal before the acquisition.

I didn't check the links, but you could do a search within the NI forum on how to improve the signal before actually acquiring it.

There should be something in the Knowledge Base.

R

[Wilfried_71]

Grasman,

I have the same driver as you (download from the HBM site) but I couldn't open the examples or anything else due to the version of the labview files (4.0 ...). How did you open it ? Is it possible to send me the files updated for LV8.6.1 ?

Thanks

Wilfried