labView and data acquisition card

[Olive1]

I have a data acquisition card bought from "lawsonlabs" (model 201). I try to do LabView programming using the card. The following shows my problem and my conversation with the Lawsonlabs company. I don't quite understand what they mean. But I just can not find the data acquisition device in LabView environment although my computer has recognized the device using the software provided by Lawsonlabs. If I have to incorporate their driver into LabView, how can I do that?

Here is  a brief summary of the problem and response from Lawsonlabs:

>Problem: I tried LabView with the data acquisition card. As I open "Measurement and automation explorer", double-click "devices and interfaces", double-click "ports", right-click "com2 usb-serial", open "test panel". No matter what I executed, the result is "idle". In labview program, I can not find the "input/output channels" or "device choice" for any vi. It seems that the LabView is not recognizing the card although the m201 test was successful. I did copy the CVI configuration file to "c:\program files\national instrument\labview8.0" directory.

Response: The process you describe is based on a level of abstraction not available in our LabView Version 5, which is the most recent version that we own. The newer functions are built from the earlier ones, and are supposed to be compatible. We can't be of too much help with software that we've never seen. What I can say is that other LabView programmers use our lower level code in Labview 8.0 without reporting problems. It may be that National would have to incorporate our driver into their software for the Model 201 to work at the level that you are trying now. They can answer that question, but we can't. We can only support LabView to the level of the diagram of the vi.

[Dennis_Knutson]

First, MAX is a utility program from National Instruments and you cannot use it for cards from other vendors. Second, it's not clear what functions in LabVIEW you are trying to use. If it's any of the DAQmx or traditional DAQ functions, you can't use those either because they are only for NI boards. It sounds like the vendor provides or can provide some LabVIEW driver of their own. It's probably a wrapper around some Call Library Function Nodes to access a dll they provide.

[MickeyD]

Olive,

It sounds like you have a fairly basic serial data acquistion device, but the real question is what drivers do you have with it.  The Lawsonlabs 201 must have some drivers since it is working with windows.  There are different ways to interact with LabVIEW.  The most direct way would be to call your driver DLLs in LabVIEW.  It sounds like your vendor has provided some National Instruments drivers, when you mention the CVI configuration file being place in the LabVIEW 8.0 directory, was that file provided by your vendor?  Dennis is correct about the difficulty you will have with using MAX unless you have National Instrument drivers for your device. Please get back to me about these questions and I will stay on top of this issue for you.

Have a great day,

Michael