Can I develop a data acquisition app without the DAQ card installed?

[mbyoung]

I'm new to LabView.

I would like to build a simple data acquisition app (graphical display and logging). I would prefer to build this on my desktop, and then install/run it on a laptop.

I'm not sure how to work this as the DAQ card and driver are not installed on my desktop. Is there a (hopefully) simple way to configure a data source in labview so that the app will automatically (or at least easily) connect to the existing driver?

At the end of the day I don't want to install the complete dev system on my cheap little laptop just for this one application.

TIA,
Michael

[BJD1613]

yes you can develop an application without having a daq card installed. You still will use the same functions in labVIEW. If you are using labVIEW 6.1 they are under the data acquisition palette in the block diagram. If you are using LV7 there are now two types of data acquisition functions. Traditional NI Daq (before lv 7) and new Daq MX. The daq functions are under the NI Measurements palette in LV7. If you are new to LV I suggest you use the daq assistant on the bottom of the palette. This will allow you to easily configure what you want, the drawback is that you will need to use this on the computer that has the card. So try the traditionaly nidaq functions. They will allow you to develop without the card. hope this helps.

[chutla]

Well, you certainly can WRITE your application, but it will be pretty hard to test without an actual card. However, you can "fake" the inputs from the card with a virtual function generator of some kind. Usually the actual card IO vi's aren't that profound, so if the rest of your application works fine, it SHOULD work once you plug in a real card.

Eric

[Mike Evans]

I find it useful to have a conditional block around the DAQ card code, with a T/F switch input to switch between real and simulation.

This allows you to output a dummy array of data if you're switched to simulation and use the real card if it's there, so the rest of the code can be developed and debugged without the hardware if needs be.

The dummy data can be changed to include errors to check the error handling of the rest of your program too.