Book Image

Data Acquisition using LabVIEW

By : Behzad Ehsani
Book Image

Data Acquisition using LabVIEW

By: Behzad Ehsani

Overview of this book

NI LabVIEW's intuitive graphical interface eliminates the steep learning curve associated with text-based languages such as C or C++. LabVIEW is a proven and powerful integrated development environment to interact with measurement and control hardware, analyze data, publish results, and distribute systems. This hands-on tutorial guide helps you harness the power of LabVIEW for data acquisition. This book begins with a quick introduction to LabVIEW, running through the fundamentals of communication and data collection. Then get to grips with the auto-code generation feature of LabVIEW using its GUI interface. You will learn how to use NI-DAQmax Data acquisition VIs, showing how LabVIEW can be used to appropriate a true physical phenomenon (such as temperature, light, and so on) and convert it to an appropriate data type that can be manipulated and analyzed with a computer. You will also learn how to create Distribution Kit for LabVIEW, acquainting yourself with various debugging techniques offered by LabVIEW to help you in situations where bugs are not letting you run your programs as intended. By the end of the book, you will have a clear idea how to build your own data acquisition system independently and much more.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Data Acquisition Using LabVIEW
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
9
Alternate Software for DAQ

Duty cycle and PWM


Pulse-Width Modulation, or PWM,  basically creates a pseudo analog voltage. In reality, PWM is a square wave where the percentage of the time where the signal is up versus the time the signal is down, called the duty cycle is varied, therefore and in effect one would get a variable voltage. In the following example, we will create a variable duty cycle; using the PWM capabilities of an Arduino compatible device called Uno32. This board is officially called "chipKIT Uno32 Prototyping Platform" and it is based on Microchip® PIC32MX320F128 and an original Arduino development environment. National Instrument is the parent company of Digilent®, the original manufacturer of this board. The board runs at 80 Mhz, but it has a 32 bit MIPS processor. As mentioned previously, the real signal produced is a square wave and to see the actual waveform we will connect the output to an oscilloscope.

Connections

Note that the Uno32 is Arduino-compatible; as such it must have proper firmware...