Anyone familiar with the National Instruments MID-7604 stepper motor drive?

[j12odie]

Hello folks,

I have been tasked with using a mid-7604 to automate a 2 axis table. I was given no documentation or assistance at all, and only told that it needed to be done in C. The computer that I am working with has a whole series of NI software on it and I am not sure what was even used to control it previously.

I found a program on the computer called NI-Motion and when trying to run it manually it seems to be able to handshake with the hardware. When I attempted to do a manual 1-D move on either of the ports that are connected to a motor it results in an error.

I found the NIMOTION C reference help manuals as well as a series of example codes but I am unsure how to even send the code to the controller.

If running C code with the motion controller, does simply including the library allow communication to the motor or does the sent code have to be sent through NI-Motion somehow?

Here is an excerpt from the guide I found:

"For C/C++ users, all functions in flexmotn.h have BOARD as the first parameter. BOARD is defined as boardID (u8)—the board identification number assigned by Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX)."[...]"Make sure you pass the correct board identification parameter for the programming language you are using. To use multiple NI-Motion devices in one application, pass the appropriate board identification parameter to each function. "

[RIObotics]

Hi there,

I've worked with the MID-7604 drive in the past, happy to give you some tips.

First of all, MID-7604 is only a drive.  There should be a motion controller board inside the computer you're using.  It would help if you could open MAX from this computer and identify which NI board this is, i.e. PCI-7344, PCI-7334, etc.  MAX will also assign a "board ID" to this controller.  You'll will need to use this board ID in your C program.

It looks like you've found some C examples, and you're able to run them.  What is the error code that you are encountering?  You can google the error code, and usually there'll be a forum post or a NI article with the solution.

Good luck though, NI-Motion has now been discontinued since 2018.  If this is a minor project, you might be able to revive this system and make use of it.  But if this is an important project, I would suggest replacing the motion controller with something that is still being supported by the vendor.