Linking ACL-Series Data Acquisition Cards to LabVIEW
"Software support, a necessity for the market success of a product, is one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers of data acquisition cards."
What is LabVIEW?
LabVIEW is the most famous graphical programming environment for data
acquisition, analysis and control. These functions are carried out through software modules called
virtual instruments (VI). With VIs, you can assemble the user interface to look like an
actual instrumentation panel with knobs, buttons, numeric controls and indicators.
Linking LabVIEW with ACL-812PG & ACL-726
Since ACL-series cards already have Dynamic Linking Libraries (DLLs) for its ACL-812PG and ACL-726 data acquisition cards. The DLLs can be linked with VIs through a LabVIEW utility. We built two VI libraries to interface between the DLLs and LabVIEW. The ACL-726 VI library has 4 VIs, they are 726 Config, 726 DI, 726 DO and 726 DA. 812PG VI library has 5 VIs, they are 812 Config, 812 DI, 812 DO, 812 DA and 812 AD. Both of their VIs can be represented as ICONs, which are shown below.
The VI contains the name of the function to execute and a list of parameters that the function needs. For example, the 812 AD VI is described as:
An Example Program
By using the VIs, you can easily make the block diagram (source code). You construct the block diagram, free from the many syntactical details of programming, by selecting the function blocks from palettes of the function menu. You can connect the function blocks with lines called wires, to pass data from one block to the next. An example block diagram constructed by 812 and 726 VI's is illustrated below:
The final front panel of the diagram above is shown below.
| Cat No. | Description | Price |
| ACLS-LVIEW1 | LabView Driver | $59.00 |
| ACLS-LVIEW2 | LabView Driver | $69.00 |
©1995 Circuit Specialists, Inc.