Ed,
Thanks very much for posting to the LabVIEW pages on NI's discussion forums. As you could see, the specific thread to which you posted has been around for a long time. It's a testament to the utility and longevity of the Siemens gas analysis devices - the oldest of the OXYMAT 6 units in daily use here at our facility was purchased in 1997.
I can probably fill you in a bit about the use of ELAN with LabVIEW - I originally wrote the LabVIEW code that implements ELAN about ten years ago. I'm a manufacturing test engineer at a medical device manufacturer (Respironics, which was acquired by Philips about two years ago), and at our facility, we use a number of OXYMAT 6 and 61 analyzers in our production test processes. They are, as I said earlier, very durable. When I was first started here, somebody had been using the analog output from the OXYMAT, reading it with a homebrew A/D converter board of dubious accuracy, to get it into their computerized system (which also did a lot of other things involving valves, flow measurement, etc.) The system software was unstable, so ultimately I was tasked to rewrite it, from scratch, in LabVIEW. This is when I first learned about ELAN. Our local Siemens rep knew nothing about it, but was able to procure me a PDF copy of the ELAN addendum; my last, best copy is dated 04/98. Of note, I have NEVER been able to find this manual on Siemens Energy and Automation website - it appears unreleased.
I gather from your posting that you are not familiar with LabVIEW. Having used it daily for over 13 years, I can tell you that the National Instruments marketing literature is essentially correct - it is by far the most popular software development environment in use for test, measurement, and data acquisition. And there is a great online community of LabVIEW developers around the world who communicate via the NI forums, as well as through other independent websites and an email list. Central to this community is the sharing of developed code for communicating with all the automated equipment from a long list of instrument manufacturers.
As you stated, one use of the Siemens ELAN protocol is for the automated cross-correcting of gas measurements between devices. But whoever originally created the protocol made it very complete. It is fully capable of allowing LabVIEW developers to integrate measurements, status and control of an OXYMAT, ULTRAMAT, or other device into an automation environment. If you page back through this thread, you can see that I've shared this 'driver' code with developers in several places in the USA, plus Germany, Poland, France, Uruguay, etc. Along the way, the thread has also picked up users looking for solutions to communicating with the rebranded California Instruments NOXMAT. That code has been graciously shared by another LabVIEW developer, who I believe manages the Engines lab at Colorado State University.
I hope that this sharing of LabVIEW code in the user community is not seen by Siemens as being competitive with Siemens' own process automation software packages - I am aware of, but unfamiliar with the existence of that (SIPROM?). Rather, it would be helpful to have Siemens participate here in support of the large community of LabVIEW developers. If you have any updated information on ELAN, I would be grateful if you could provide it in support of us.
With best regards,
Dave
David Boyd
Sr. Test Engineer
Abbott Labs
(lapsed) Certified LabVIEW Developer
