“Cool Muscle” motors

[ree]

Has anyone used  NI SoftMotion Development Module for LabVIEW to control/run “Cool Muscle” motors (http://www.coolmuscle.com/Motors)?

[Mr._Jim]

Hi Ree,

I'm not familiar with Cool Muscle's product line, but from their information it looks like the servo drive and motor are integrated.  If you could buy their motor by itself (without an integrated drive), you could hypothetically drive it with NI's hardware (CompactRIO, M and R Series DAQ, Compact FieldPoint).  Because it's an integrated servo motor and drive, it looks like you'd have to control it with digital outputs (such as on a DAQ card) or with CM's proprietary protocol via RS-232 or RS-485.

My short answer is "probably not."  You can almost certainly control it with LabVIEW via a serial port, but it doesn't look to me like you can use SoftMotion.  If someone else knows better, feel free to jump in.

Jim

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

They have CommManager that uses ActiveX and is compatible with LabVIEW. I don't know how much you can do with it, suggest you take a look at the manual, and they have a 30 day free trial evaluation download.

http://www.coolmuscle.com/Software

-AK2DM

[Mr._Jim]

I don't know about CommManager specifically, but if a manufacturer offers an ActiveX API, sometimes it's quite a bit easier to work with than the protocol itself.  I controlled a Parker servo drive a couple of times and that was the case.

Good find, AK2DM.

[BenG15]

I stumbled on this thread looking for an answer to the same question regarding cool muscle motors.  The easiest fix was using NI-VISA to communicate with the device.  Attached is a basic code to send dynamic motor commands.