How to use Analog out with a 7330/7604 motion setup.

[biller]

Hello:

I am using a NI 7330 motion controller and a MID-7604 driver.  I would like to use the Analog Output of the MID-7604 driver.  Ideally, we would use an actual DAQ, but we don't want to purchase hardware for a one-time use kind of thing.

The driver has Analog outputs, but I can not find any documentation on how to use them.  I understand that it may be due to the 7330 controller not supporting the functionality, but, again, I have not found any documentation to support this.  Does anyone know how to access and use the Analog outputs?  I want to be able to send a variable 0-1 V signal from an Analog output.  Any ideas?

[Jochen]

The analog output terminal block on the 7604 is a feedthrough terminal to analog outputs provided by a  7340 or 7350 motion controller. As there are no analog outputs on the 7330, there is no analog output available with this configuration.
If you are looking for a low cost solution for AO, I recommend using the USB-6009 or the PCI-6221. Please refer to the product specifications to find out which product better meets your requirements.

Best regards,

Jochen Klier
National Instruments Germany

[biller]

Thanks for the reply.  That was our guess, but there was no documentation saying such, so we thought better to ask.  We are going to go with the PCI solution.

[Jochen]

Well, in fact this is documented:

MID-760x User Guide:
The analog output terminal block provides access to four digital-to-analog converter channels with ±10V output range and analog output ground.

With this information and the pinout of the 7330 you could tell that there are no AO channels available in this configuration but I agree 100% with you that sometimes it's quite hard to decrypt this type of information from our documentation .We should provide more explicit information about which features are implemented in the controllers and which features are part of the peripherals (MIDs, UMIs).

Jochen