Simple program to transfer 0-5 volt signal to solar radiation data.

[Jswans57]

Hi, I'm new to programming with LabVIEW and I have a question that will probably be very easy for most.  What I am doing is wiring up a solar pyranometer to measure solar radiation.  The insurment outputs data from 0-5 volts. The scale is 284 Watts/m^2 (solar radiation) for every 1 volt ouput. So at 0 volts it's 0 Watts/m^2, and at 5 volts it's at 1424 Watts/m^2.

My question is, how do I go about programming it so I can read and collect data in Watts/m^2? I already have the proper LabVIEW hardware, just very little understanding for writing programs.

Thanks in advance,

John

[Cory_K]

Could you provide more detail about your hardware?

How does it communicate with your computer: GPIB, serial, USB, etc.

Here's a very simple example just to show you how you would convert your voltage to watts/m^2:

[Jswans57]

My computer is connected via usb to the compdaq-9172 chasis. I'm using a Ni 9206 module for data acquisition.

Thanks

[smercurio_fc]

The 9206 is a DAQ device so you need to use DAQmx to get information from it. If you have not installed DAQmx you will need to do so. Make sure you install support for LabVIEW during the DAQmx installation.

You can use MAX to quickly set up a task to read from your device. More information can be found in the MAX online help. 

For something simple  in LabVIEW you can simply use the DAQ Assistant. I would strongly suggest looking over this page: Getting Started with NI-DAQmx: Basic Programming with NI-DAQmx. It contains a wealth of information on using DAQmx.

To learn more about LabVIEW it is recommended that you go through the tutorial(s) and look over the material in the NI Developer Zone's Learning Center which provides links to other materials and other tutorials. You can also take the online courses for free.