What kind of A/D converter is supported in LabVIEW?

[Jud~]

Is LabVIEW only limited to the NI A/D converters?  I assume it is not... but what kinds of issues do they have with other A/D and the data acquisition process?  Thanks!

[smercurio_fc]

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Jud~ wrote:
Is LabVIEW only limited to the NI A/D converters? 

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No.

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Jud~ wrote:
but what kinds of issues do they have with other A/D and the data acquisition process? 

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If you use a DAQ card from another vendor then you need the drivers for that card. The main issue you run into is whether or not they have LabVIEW drivers for the card. If not, then you need to see if they have a DLL. They will likely provide a DLL in case you want to write some C code. You would then need to write LabVIEW code to call the DLL. This can be difficult if you are not familiar with C and/or LabVIEW. If they provide a header file for the DLL then you can use the wizard that comes with LabVIEW to generate the wrapper VIs (Tools -> Import -> Shared Library).

If you want to make your life easy try to get a DAQ card from a vendor that provides LabVIEW drivers. 

[Jud~]

Thanks for the reply.

I was looking at http://www.ni.com/compactrio/whatis.htm and how it is an DAQ system all in itself..Signal conditioning.. ADC.. plus FPGA, bus..etc..  If I was to replace this DAQ system that works perfectly fine in my system with seperate chips.. such as an A/D chip .. etc.. how would that have to be compatible with LabVIEW?  Thanks again!

[smercurio_fc]

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Jud~ wrote:

If I was to replace this DAQ system that works perfectly fine in my system

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Hmmm... If it ain't broke....

Anyway, if you choose to replace it your own A/D chip, which is something completely different than using a pre-made card, then you need to talk to the chip. How to do this depends on the chip. You would, at a minimum, need a communication interface, and this most likely will be some sort of digital interface, something akin to SPI. How to do this in LabVIEW would be no different than how you would do it in C/C++/VB/Java/fill-in-your-language-here. You will need drivers. You would also need buffering, gains, (possibly) level-shifting, output and input protection.... 

Can you narrow down specifically what you're trying to do? As it is, your question(s) are a bit too vague to answer properly.

[Jud~]

Hmm.. what I am trying to achieve is: instead of using NI's DAQ board and LabVIEW for testing purposes (which works perfectly well), I wanted to see if I could make the DAQ board using generic chips, etc. and check to see if it is still running properly with the LabVIEW software.  Just tell me if I am way over my head here.

[smercurio_fc]

Maybe, maybe not. I can't really answer that because it depends on how much electronics and design experience you have. If you hunt around on the net you should be able to find a number of simple DAQ designs and then you can decide for yourself if it's over your experience level. Here's a couple of places:

http://www.discovercircuits.com/

http://www.electronic-circuits-diagrams.com/

[Jud~]

Hm.. thanks smercurio for your insight.