LabVIEW to control telescope mount.

[JM 351]

As part of a project I have to control two axis stepper motors to mount and conrtol a telescope using LabVIEW.The project involves moving to entered co-ordinates, and following this star at a fixed rate.No use of encoders-just moving motors from home positions.Interface of LabVIEW to driver circuit is via NI PC-1200 digital I/O card. My knowledge of LabVIEW is minimal and I need advice!!

[Kyle_V]

I assume you're using stepper motors. In this case, your BEST solution is to use an NI motion control card (NI-7334 or NI-7344). However, if you'd like to use the PC-1200, it should work, but it will depend on your motor amplifier.

Usually stepper motor amplifiers take two inputs: step and direction. In this case, you would use the Counter output of the PC-1200 card for step and a DIO line for direction. If the amplifier has an input for clockwise motion and another input for counter-clockwise motion, then you'll need to use two of the counter outputs on the PC-1200.

NI-DAQ 6.9.x ships with many example programs that should show you how to create a pulse train from the DAQ board