New Labview User - Motor Control

[LTE]

Hey everyone... I am an engineering student who has been given the task to construct a large interface in which we can control a serial motor and digital camera simultanously through a Labview VI. Up to this point, the motor is being operated through hyperterminal and the camera through C++, but the desire of my research group is to be able to control both by just using control values in a VI to specify the actions.

The problem arises that I am very new to Labview and I feel a little overwhelmed. I have only very basic knowledge of Labview, as well as motor control and the likes. I am posting this to ask if any veterans in the area could give me useful links or what-not to help give me at least a kick in the pants towards the right direction. Thanks for the help that anyone can give!

Lowell Taylor Edgar
Rutgers University, Department of Biomedical Engineering

[Jasper S]

Lowell,

Are you using a driver supplied by the camera vendor to communicate with it?  Or are you using the National Instruments driver, NI-IMAQ?

Regards,

Jasper S

[LTE]

At this point we are not using any NI drivers or hardware, but I question that has been raised is do we need to? Obviously the group is interested in not spending any extra money and would prefer to keep it without having to purchase new equipment, but they are not opposed to it if it is absolutely necessicary...


PS thanks for you reponse 🙂

[Nick_D]

Hey LTE,

It's not 100% necessary to use NI-hardware. Something you may choose to use is the Instrument Driver Developer, and use NI-VISA to talk to your camera. The only downside is it's a low-level language, and you may need to send register level commands to your board to communicate. You would have to find the way the board sends commands back, and then you should be fine communicating it with labVIEW.

Regards,

Nick D.

[Bill_5335]

Can you provide details on your motor, such as how the speed, distance, etc will be controlled? I've been looking into controlling motors via an RS232 port.  The best option I've found was using a stepper motor with an integrated controller/driver. ($800). Haven't spent the money yet....