Hey All,
So.. I've attached a stepper motor to a linear stage and so far it's working pretty well. Using a stepper motor driver from Pololu, I've simplified the control of the motor by just using output pulses from the counter output of a PXI-6143. I've tested the motor using the Pulse Train examples in LabVIEW and all is working well.
My goal now is to allow the user to collect data from a pressure sensor, attached to the linear stage, every X number of steps. From what I can tell so far, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the motor step movement is synchronised with the pulse train input. That is to say, if I give the motor a 200 step pulse train, the pulse train ouput is completed at the exact time the motor has moved 200 steps. From this, I've created a VI that moves the motor X steps, aquires the data point, and then repeats this process for the required amount of data points. The problem with this is that the motor movement is not continuous; it stops for a split second to take the data point.
How can I have labview ouput a pulse train of say 1000 steps and record a data point every 50 steps?
Two ideas that came to mind were:
1. Use the counter input port on the card to count the pulses being sent to the motor.
2. Use an encoder connected to the motor shaft.
I wanted to stay away from theses ideas though since they require resources from the DAQ card.
Thanks,
Ryan
