6009 For Serial Communication

[Nakor]

Hi,

I have never used a DAQ for this before, so this may be a silly question.

I have a motor driver that can take I2C or serial input (http://www.robotshop.com/content/PDF/md25-documentation-md25.pdf).

I know from searching the forums I can't make the 6009 do I2C communication, but can't seem to find any details about serial communication. I know there is timing issues but I don't really know what that means for me. If someone could tell me if its possible (and how if your feeling generous) that would be fantastic.

What I had in mind was either writing my own pulses - although this seems messy, or hoping that there was a function in one of the VI libs for this DAQ.

Thanks, Matt

[Dennis_Knutson]

Yes, it is a bit silly question to ask if the 6009 can do serial communication.

Buy yourself an inexpensive USB-RS232 converter and use that. That document you linked has no information at all on the actual serial communication so you will need to get that.

[SnowMule]

6009's software-timed on the DIO's. So you're going to have a lot of variation from the bus and op system deciding when to actually update the line... You could probably make it work at painfully slow speeds... but consider the development time of writing the VI's to drive the lines...

...trust me, you're better off going with a $10 USB-to-Serial converter and just using VISA. SiLabs CP2102's work well.

[Nakor]

Yes, about that lack of serial communication info, I have no idea - is what I was going to say, until feeling like I wasn't trying hard enough made me guilty and i tried harder. So theres this: http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/md25tech.htm , which has links to go into more details about the serial comms. I have at one point programmed a serial communication thing (PWM comms) from scratch but don't know if what I did was anywhere near standard.

I guess this is moving outside the DAQ area of questions but maybe Ill get lucky. So now im considering get either a 323 usb adapter or a i2c adapter. I assume I would plug either of them into the computer usb side, and rip apart the adapter on the other side to just get the 2 pins I need. So this is when it gets tricky for me. Could I still somehow use labview to talk to the MD through either of these (even though the MD isnt NI)? The DAQ will still also be plugged into some sensors and giving data to labview so if I could keep it to one labview program doing all the processing and IO that would be great. Even better would be if there is some kind of librarys to do serial or I2C with non-NI devices (or maybe there are NI adapters?) Im goign to try to answer these questiosn for myself now, but any input would be great.

Thanks for being my wall guys ha.

-Matt

[Nakor]

Update: Thinking of using this guy:

http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/usb_iss_tech.htm

to send out the data to the motor controllers based on the input from the 6009. Still trying to figure out how to talk to it from labview.

[SnowMule]

Other option, might be cheaper/easier anyways... Arduino. 

I have an Uno board here at my desk that can do serial and PWM, and can talk to LabVIEW. 

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10812

[Nakor]

I did consider that, but I have never used one of them either. I would need to take the info from the daq (the aruidos arent fast enough for the audio data we need), put it to labview on a computer, and then send the results to the arduino, then talk to the MD. My partner looked into getting the arduino to talk right to the DAQ but said there were no drivers for that.

[SnowMule]

Both the Arduino and DAQ will talk to the computer, not to one another.

[Nakor]

Ok, that is what I thought. Thank you for that very speedy reply by the way, have a kudos, what ever that may be! Im going to go with the adapter above and then use which ever mode (I2C or serial) that I can find the easiest way to talk to through labview.

-Matt