Using Labview as a microcontroller to interface with circuit

[stellarowl12]

Hi all, 

I am trying to do some circuit measurements and simulation using Labview as my microcontroller.  Basically, I want to have a battery and supercapacitor as my hardware components and together, they work to supply current to a load.  

As for Labview I want it to generate a pulsed load and I want it to tell the battery to charge the supercapacitor when the load is idle and the supercapacitor to charge the load when it is active.  Therefore, the battery and supercapacitors would not be directly connected to each other but instead it would be connected to Labview which would incorporate the switching.  

My question is what is the best way to implement what I am trying to do in both Labview and in hardware.  What kind of circuit board should I use to best implement what I'm trying to do?  Also, what libraries/functions/modules should I look at in Labview to create different pulsed loads (that we define beforehand), to write the microcontroller code, and the do the circuit measurements of the voltage/current characteristics of the battery/supercapacitor as time goes on in the simulation. Finally, is it even possible for Labview to do this kind of switching that I am trying to do? 

Thanks, 

Kevin 

[LV_Pro]

LabVIEW is controlling a large portion of the CERN Large Hadron Collider, so the answer to the last part of your question is yes. With doing too much analysis I would say that what you want is a state machine that is controlling the hardware, with one of the states being generate the load pulses, another the charge command. Now as to what hardware "circuit board" that is something that there isn't nearly enough information to make a suggestion. How are you "telling the battery to charge"? What do you mean "generate a pulsed load"? A load is usually a current sink of some sort, the simplest being a suitably big resistor of the "right" ratings. How accurately do you need timings? That would determine whether it would be run on a regular computer running Windows (or MacOS or Linux) versus running on a real-time (RT) hardware. I suspect that the timings aren't more ciritical than millisecond, so RT is probably not needed, but that is a guess on my part without any information on your part. LabVIEW itself won't switch anything in the real world, but it can control other circuits, such as Digital IO (DIO) etc. So you will have to define/design your target circuit a little more.

[stellarowl12]

Basically I have a battery and a supercapacitor and I want to use the two to charge a pulsed load according to the charging policy that we define (i.e. charge the supercap with the battery when the load is idle and use the supercap to supply the load when it is active).  Can Labview generate a real workload and "take energy" from the battery/supercap system or do we need some sort of current sink contraption to do so.  We want to run this workload for some period of time and measure how the battery and supercap voltage and current characteristics behave (decay) over time. 

Thanks, 

Kevin

[LV_Pro]

LabVIEW is a programming language, and as such can only be used to control other "real world" hardware pieces. I' don't know what you mean by a "pulsed load", but I suspect that you will need some "load device", connected to a switching device capable of handling current levels higher than expected to be drawn by the load, and another switch of some type to connect the battery to the supercap when it isn't connected to the load. More than likely you will need some digital I/O to control intermediate circuitry  to control these "switches" which are probably power relays of some form, as most DIO doesn't have sufficient drive to control them directly, and it is also a good idea to have a layer of circuitry between the "world" and your computer. How are you planning to measure the characteristics?