Mark-10 Torque Test Stand Motion control with Labview

[Kuvaas@Surmodics]

I'm a new LabVIEW user and I need to create a labview program that will run an automated test sequence on a Mark-10 Torque Test Stand. The test stand accepts ASCII commands and I've verified they work through Visa Interactive control. MY question is: how can I enter my motion control program written in the ASCII commands into LabVIEW? I've included my ASCII program for reference.

l *enter travel limit mode*
i *set travel limit to degrees*
h000360 *set upper travel limit to 360 degrees*
e90.00 *set speed to 90 deg/sec*
u *move CW, test stand should rotate 360 degrees at 90 deg/sec*
h003600 *set upper travel limit to 3600 degrees*
u *move CW, test stand should rotate 3240 degrees (9 full rotations) at 90 deg/sec*
s *stop*
z *reset travel to zero*

Thanks. 

[KathrynTheGreat]

It sounds like you need to use VISA commands to communicate with your system- this sort of question would be better handled in the Instrument Control forums, as they tend to have more experience working with VISA calls.

To answer your question, though, the best way to get a good feel for programming VISA calls would be to look at the built-in VISA examples in LabVIEW. If you go to Help > Find Examples.., it should bring up the Example Finder window. Search for VISA, and you'll bring up a variety of examples on how to accomplish common tasks using VISA calls. Simple Serial.vi is a good one to start with, as it configures the communication, then writes a string to the line, and attempts to read back in any response.

If you have further questions, go ahead and post on the Instrument Control forums, and they should be able to help you out.