Data Acquisition Idea Exchange

The DAQ Assistant was presumably created to simplify data acquisition.  The idea seems to be to put all of the needed pieces in one place, so that all the low level 'traditional' DAQ vi functions are not needed.

Consider the following simple vi:

This could be as simple as one analog input channel.

The program will compile into an .exe and work just fine, as long as you don't use one of the features of the DAQ Assistant:  Custom scales.

Custom scales are not stored with the VI or project, but in a system file that does not automatically get included in an .exe build.  The .exe will work fine on the original PC that built it, but it will not work when the .exe is loaded on a different PC.

There is a method that allow the user to port the custom scales to another PC, but it is not automatic.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/12288DEB3C6A185B862572A70043C353

The fundamental problem is that the DAQ Assistant is intended to make life simple and give you everything you need to make a program.  Custom scales are included in the DAQ Assistant so that the programmer does not need to manually create scaling in their vi.  But what good does that do if they are not included in the .exe build, and there is no obvious clue that this requires extra work or what that work is?

The build .exe process needs to be upgraded to automatically include custom scales and possibly other MAX settings that are essential to the operation of a compiled program.  It does not matter if the build process ciphers and includes only the specific scales or setting used by the particular program / vi, or if it just takes all the settings. 

These are critical pieces to make the final compiled program run on another machine.  The user should not have to somehow know that these pieces are separate but need to be included, and have to take extra steps to go out and select them in order for them to be used in the build.  That is totally counter intuitive to the simplicity intended by the DAQ Assistant.

Currently my entire school district is going 1:1 with chromebooks for your students. This is also happing in many other schools around the country. It would be awesome if you could develop a way for your programs to be based off a "cloud". This would allow for students to use the programs at home and in different locations around the school, not just a "computer lab" that has the software loaded onto it. 

I'm not sure who reads this, but I'm not seeing any feedback in the forum so I thought I'd post up here.   This may seem like a simple thing, but hopefully my pain will be someone else gain.  I messed with this off and on for two months before I finally figured it out.  It's probably obvious to those who work with this equipment every day and have EE degrees, but not so much to those of us who do not. 

Please see http://forums.ni.com/t5/Multifunction-DAQ/Measuring-220VAC-with-CompactDAQ/td-p/1145956 for a description of the issues I was having. 

Some will tell me to "search"... well, I did.  ...and everywhere I looked all I found was that I needed to measure from the power leg to ground.  All of the examples either were only measuring 120 which is fine since what you have is one power leg and neutral... which is basically ground!  So those numbers come out fine.  Or they were for 3 phase, which I don't use currently.  BUT when you try and measure anything with two power legs (basically anything between 208VAC to 240 VAC) the numbers don't work out right if you try to measure between each power leg to ground and then try to recombine them and plug them into the Power VI's.  Not one place that I looked did it tell me that I need to measure both power legs across a single channel.  I only finally tried it because I'd done pretty much everything else.  I know this is pretty basic stuff, but when all you give me says one thing... that's what we do.  Just trying to help others.

Thanks,

Chad