labview program for controlling oriel shutter driver 76995

[Monika86]

Hi All,

We're setting up a solar simulator and would like to automate shutter opening and closing times.

The shutter driver we have is Oriel 76995. The driver should be able to connect to a computer via a serial port. Unfortunately I haven't found a ready-made Labview program to control this driver. I'm completely new to Labview, I'm a chemist actually.. could someone please help with this?

Thank you very much..!

regards

Monika

[Jackie_B]

Hi Monika, 

Unfortunately, it is going to be very difficult to find packaged code to communicate with this device and Applications Engineers do not write code. It does not appear that we have any drivers to interface with this device. Have you communicated to Oriel to see if they have drivers that specifically interface with LabVIEW? Oftentimes, these companies will also have example code for communicating with you device in LabVIEW.

If you must begin the programming journey yourself, you will most likely want to start with an example program. If you go to LabVIEW Help-> Find Examples-> Hardware Input and Output-> Serial. This will give you a basic understanding of the structure of communicating with your device and will give you a good starting point. From there, I would ask specific questions when you run into trouble. I hope this helps!

Regards,

Jackie

[Monika86]

Hi Jackie,

Thanks a lot for your quick reply. I had asked Oriel before and they said they don't have anything- which I found really surprising..

I will try the help topic you suggested, just one more question: Where can I find how to include dialog boxes where the user can specify the opening/closing times? (or is that in the same topic?) I've beeen trying to find out this one in manuals but had no luck just yet.

Thanks again

Monika

[Albert.Geven]

maybe you can post the programming manual for the device and some labview guru can help you a bit.

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

The shutter driver also accomodates control via a digital input, so if you have a DAQ card on hand that may be an alternative to using serial commands.

-AK2DM

[Monika86]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks a lot for your help!

Luckily I found a local Labview enthusiast who wrote the program for me and he could establish communication between the driver and Labview using the example program Jackie suggested. If you let me know how can I share this with anyone else who might need it, I'm happy to do so.(I think it's really general)

At the same time, I don't recommend this Oriel shutter driver system to anyone thinking of setting up a similar instrument. The manual is only available in print, it's nowhere online, way out of date, and the only test program they describe there was written probably in C back in 2003. The manual also refers to an existing Labview  program that should be available from them- but it's not. In retrospect, I think a similar system from Thorlabs would have been a better choice.

Thanks again for your kind help.

Cheers Monika

[nicod]

Good day

we have this shutter as well and would like to control it via labview

Could you please upload your program to give us a head start

Thank you

[JoshY]

Hi Nicod,

From the looks of it, I don't think Monika86 is too active in these forums anymore. Also, from their recommendation, it doesn't look like this device is the easiest to interface with. I would follow Jackie's advice to start with an example program and build from there.