LABVIEW controlled USB-to-SPI Hardware

[q1uant]

Hey all! I'm trying to find a piece of hardware I can control via LabView that can send data via SPI protocol. It doesnt need to be anything special. I was using a FT232H chip but for the life of me I can not get it to work via LabView. Anyone know of anything. I know NI has some $500 dollar module but thats a hell of a lot more hardware than I need. Thanks!

[LVNinja]

you can try using an arduino for that. 

[santo_13]

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@q1uant wrote:

Hey all! I'm trying to find a piece of hardware I can control via LabView that can send data via SPI protocol. It doesnt need to be anything special. I was using a FT232H chip but for the life of me I can not get it to work via LabView. Anyone know of anything. I know NI has some $500 dollar module but thats a hell of a lot more hardware than I need. Thanks!

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This is a good reason start a open source project to build LV drivers for FT232H.

[crossrulz]

Raspberry Pi would be another option if going on the cheap side.

[NIquist]

I need one of these as well and found several on Amazon.  I think I'm going to try out the Adafruit option though.

Adafruit FT232H Breakout - General Purpose USB to GPIO, SPI, I2C [USB C & Stemma QT] : ID 2264 : Ada...

This one uses the FTDI FT232H chip and is designed for control with Python code.  I can use Python but would rather have the option to control it with LabVIEW and C#/.NET as well.  I'll post back if I find better choices...

[NIquist]

I had high hopes for the Waveshare products.  Especially this one ($21 at amazon😞  USB TO UART/I2C/SPI/JTAG - Waveshare Wiki

The Python example code just uses ctypes, so LabVIEW should be able to talk to it through a DLL, but there are no LabVIEW drivers I have found for any of these products.  That's not too surprising considering LabVIEW's popularity these days. ☹️ 

[crossrulz]

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@santo_13 wrote:
This is a good reason start a open source project to build LV drivers for FT232H.

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Here is a place to start: https://lavag.org/topic/19993-cr-mpsse-spi 

[Frozen]

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@q1uant wrote:

Hey all! I'm trying to find a piece of hardware I can control via LabView that can send data via SPI protocol. It doesnt need to be anything special. I was using a FT232H chip but for the life of me I can not get it to work via LabView. Anyone know of anything. I know NI has some $500 dollar module but thats a hell of a lot more hardware than I need. Thanks!

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Can you expand on what is not working for you with the FT232H chip? AFAIK, the FT232 chip only does RS232, not SPI or I2C... but I could be wrong.

The FT4232 chip can do all the serial protocols, including SPI and I2C.

I am personally using a "FT4232H MINI MODULE" dev board from FTDI. Available from Digikey. About the same price as an R-PI but a lot less functionality.

Adafruit also has a "FT232H USB TO GPIO/SPI/I2C" adapter board. It is half the price of the FTDI dev board. Also available from  Digikey.

Hope this helps.

[Hooovahh]

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@LVNinja wrote:

you can try using an arduino for that. 

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This is what I used when I wanted cheap SPI in the past.  An Arduino can be flashed with the LIFA, or LINX software, and then that toolkit in LabVIEW can be used.  I usually have difficulty figuring out various settings.  But once I got it working I was able to select the NI SPI hardware or Arduino one for projects.