DAQmx Base Examples on Mac do not work for specific devices including USB-6009

[thobson]

Hi there,

Just got a USB-6009 and can't get a single whisper of analog output out of it using the examples provided by DAQmx Base.

The executable for the contGeneration.c example (which should generate a sine wave output) just hangs for a while, and then prints an error message: 

DAQmxBase Error -200452: <err>Specified property is not supported by the device or is not applicable to the task.

This is with the code completely untouched, as provided by NI. Does not work. 

So, there must be some modifications that I have to make to the code so that it will work for my specific device, the USB-6009. Unfortunately it is not at all clear to me what these modifications should be. In fact, they are described in the beginning comment of the .c file, but to be honest with you, they are quite difficult to understand. They are numbered and so appear superficially to be useful, but I'm having a hard time extracting any actual information from them, other than the vague sense that whoever wrote them was in a rush. 

I did notice that removing the call to 

DAQmxErrChk (DAQmxBaseCfgSampClkTiming(taskHandle,"",sampleRate,DAQmx_Val_Rising,DAQmx_Val_ContSamps,samplesPerChan)); 

prevented the error from occurring. I assume this is because the analog output of the USB-6009 has such an underwhelmingly slow sample rate. However, despite the error being gone, no sine wave came out of the analog output of the USB-6009. Not a waveform to be seen on the 'scope.

I'm not sure what to do here, it really shouldn't be this confusing to get analog output working on a device like this. What do I have to do to get C code that will make the USB-6009 output analog signals?

Thanks!

[johnsold]

I do not know anything about C code but I think your probelm is that you are trying to do something which the USB-6009 cannot do. The anlog outputs and digital inputs and outputs on that device are software timed only. So you cnnot configure smple clock timing because the hardware does not exist. Only analog input can be hardware timed on the USB-6009.

With software timing you write one sample on each call.

Lynn

[Aaron_W.]

johnsold,

You are correct. The 6008 / 6009 are only software timed for analog output. There is no timebase to configure so hence the error.

thobson,

Look for an example with SW timing. The 6008 / 6009 devices are pretty limited but that's why they are cheaper than the other NI options.

[thobson]

Ah, ok, fabulous, that answers my question. Thanks! I'll have a look at software timing.

[holographix]

Sorry to revive this post, but I'm encountering that very same problem on the USB-6210.

Shouldn't the USB-6210 supposed to be capable of doing such a thing?

Thx in advance.

Aaron.

PS 

just to be clear, in my case, I have an external clock that I already use for ad analog input ( that works like a charm ).

Since I'd also need to read digital values ( with the same clock ), I added a new task to achieve that.

Since I saw that my program crashed miserably, I tried to go back to square one, by giving a shot 

to the examples, and there I found that the sample program ContReadDigChan-ExtClk.c

fails to execute with the infamous error: 

DAQmxBase Error -200452: <err>Specified property is not supported by the device or is not applicable to the task.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Of course it's not supposed to work. Have you read any of the documentation?

https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.usb-6210.html

[JoeFriedchicken]

---

holographix wrote:

Sorry to revive this post, but I'm encountering that very same problem on the USB-6210.

Shouldn't the USB-6210 supposed to be capable of doing such a thing?

<snip>

just to be clear, in my case, I have an external clock that I already use for ad analog input ( that works like a charm ).

Since I'd also need to read digital values ( with the same clock ), I added a new task to achieve that.

---

Using an external sample clock is often called 'correlated' or 'timed' digital input/output. The only devices that support that kind of digital operations are the PCI and PCIe DAQ devices [1]

[1] NI-DAQmx Base 14.0 readme

https://www.ni.com/en/support/downloads/drivers/download.ni-daqmx-base.html#326056

[holographix]

Hey thx for the heads up, that's what I suspected.

So I guess I'll switch the input to analog to work this issue around.

Thx again