Counting Pulse of Flow Meter on 9426 DI Module

[AlexHK]

Hello

I am a complete newbie. I have just received my new NI 9426 Digital Input Module and it sits in a 8 slot cDAQ-9188.

I have installed Lab View 2012 Signal Express and NI-DAQmx drivers.

I have connected 4 flow meters (open collector) that pulse 263 times per liter.

http://www.digisavant.com/PDF/FS-4400H-Spec.pdf

I have added them in LabView as Acquire Signals and I can see a stream of 0 and 1 on at least one of them. I just used 100 samples and 1k Hertz for now and "Continues Samples". For the other three I am still checking if it's a wiring issue or voltage etc.

What I really don't understand is how to count those edges now. Would I need another software? Is this possible via free software (I am in some sort of 7 day evaluation period). What other software packages are there?

I have used Google and I saw people with the NI9426 have used .vi files to count from flow meters, but I fail to understand if I can use this in LabView or not. As you can tell, I am just a bit puzzled. I wish I would have much more time to read all the documents, but at this moment I am working on a project with a very tight schedule and the most important is to get the counting up and running quickly. At a later stage I will have time to learn more

I have attched the project file, not sure if that would help.

Thanks in advance for any pointers!

Alex

[Daniel-E]

Hey Alex,

So it looks like your 9426 module doesn't have any counters on it, which complicates things a bit--most of the built-in edge counting functions use a counter. There are some ways to do that in software, as shown here:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-22634

Just so you're aware, LabVIEW and Signal Express are two different software programs. Signal Express is an extremely simplified method of acquiring and analyzing signals, while LabVIEW is much more flexible and powerful, and will allow you to do more advanced types of acquisition and analysis. Are you open to using LabVIEW, or are you wanting to stick with Signal Express? If you have access to LabVIEW, you might have better luck with that, or at the very least you could create a VI in LabVIEW and call it from Signal Express as described here:

http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3203/en

I hope this helps some, and please let us know if you have further questions!