quartzdyne Transducer - serial comms

[labnoob]

Hopefully this isn’t too vague a question in order to stimulate a response from you guys.

I’m looking into using, perhaps a Labview FPGA environment to satisfy my control/instrumentation needs.  

I will be using Quartzdyne transducer to measure temperature and pressure.  As i understand it the transducers connect to another Quartzdyne device (Q-link; which computes the temps and press), and this in turn connects to a PC serial port. One is then able to use Quartzdyne’s proprietary software (see pic) to monitor the variables.

What i would be keen to find out, is if it would be possible to not user their own software, but instead produce a Labview  VI that will accept the serial data, interpret it, and be displayed in Labview   

Anyone?

Thanks

[img] http://www.quartzdyne.com/image/scottscreen.jpg[/img]

[GerdW]

Hi noob,

well, did you ask QuartzDyne for a manual? If they provide valuable information to their customers to may also provide details of the communication protocol. When you get this you can use your own copy of the "Basic Serial Read and Write" example that comes with LabVIEW...

[labnoob]

Hi,

Im reading their manual as we speak. It would appear that “any commercially available terminal emulator can be used to communicate with the Q-link”

So looks like it will be fairly straight forward then??

Data access commands

Read data

D[1]¬                     +/- nnnnn.nnn                  Primary Output  (pressure)

[GerdW]

Hi noob,

yes, that will do.

Start with HyperTerminal (atleast on Windows). When it works there you close HyperTerm and start the mentioned example with the very same settings and go your way...

[labnoob]

Hi gerdW,

one last question if i may. i have been experimenting with "Basic Serial Read and Write"; the terminal for "write buffer", and "read buffer", is there anyway i could change the default string to somthing that will poll for multiple commands sequentially. And also have multiple outputs to read these i.e. an indicator that shows both temp and pressure?

Thanks

G

[Noji]

You can download a working LabVIEW demo that was designed for the QCOM module, which replaces the Q-Link and Series-I modules.  The package contains both the standalone executable and the complete source (VIs) that make up the demo software.

Visit http://qd.quartzdyne.com/public/QCOM/QCOM-Download.php to download that and other demo apps.  The site includes instructions on how to use both the standalone demo and the demo source in LabVIEW 2011.

The Series-I module only works with frequency (aka, analog) transducers.  The Q-Link module only works with digital transducers.  The QCOM module works with both types.

Also, the older modules require separate power supplies, while the QCOM module does not.  The older modules communicate via RS-232, but the QCOM module plugs into any available USB port.  Finally, the QCOM module is smaller and much less expensive than the older modules.

Noji

Quartzdyne