Generate Arbitrary Waveforms with NI 5401

[ulla]

Hi all!

I work with the Arbitrary Function Generator NI 5401. So far it wasn't a problem to generate standard waveforms, but now I want to generate arbitrary waveforms or rather readout yet generated arbitrary waveforms. I can do so, initialising the NIFGEN works, but configuring the output mode with Arbitrary Waveform I get the error message: "5401 does not support output modes NIFGEN_VAL_OUTPUT_ARB and NIFGEN_VAL_OUTPUT_SEQ." The same happens using "APP ARB WFM".

I know that the hardware can generate arbitrary waveforms (the NI_FGEN Soft Front Panel (not LabView)can do it!) but is it possible that there are missing some software-components for LabVIEW?!

Thanks!
Ulla

[GDEV]

Hi Ulla,

you are right the NI-5401 can generate custom data. This feature of the NI-5401 on the other hand is not treaded by NI-FGEN as arbitrary waveforms. In order to use this feature you need to configure your module in either Standard Function Mode or Frequency List Mode. The function to download custom data to the NI-5401 is 'niFgen Define User Standard Waveform.vi' in LabVIEW and 'niFgen_DefineUserStandardWaveform' in C. Calling this function will allow you to download one waveform with exact 16384 samples which have to be normalized to within ±1V.

If you have additional questions don't hesitate to write again.

Sincerely,

Marian Koop
Software Engineer
National Instruments

[cld]

Here is a link to an example on our website:

http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/niepd_web_display.DISPLAY_EPD4?p_guid=B53A24EA9791426CE034080020E74861&p_node=DZ52000&p_submitted=N&p_rank=&p_answer=&p_source=External

I hope this helps!
Chris D
NI Applications Engineer