Read/Write Serial Data Between USB-6343 and FPGA

[frastede]

This is more or less a sanity check. I currently have a 6040E (Legacy) PCIe DAQ card and I'm looking to upgrade to the USB-6343 DAQ. Reason for upgrading to this model is more I/O and features and our personal computer is about to die on us and a USB interface will be much easier to maintain going further (personal opinion). The new project requires data TX/RX between the DAQ and a FPGA. I've been reading into this and it seems there isn't a whole lot of information on doing this, but still seems quite possible. Just looking for a second opinion/ examples/ tools to streamline the design. Thanks in advance!

[mudson]

Hello frastede,

If you were previously using the 6040E for serial communication, the bit-banging part of your code should work fine with the USB-6343.  I also expect that there should be few (if any) changes to the DAQmx portion of your code as well.

An X-Series card is like a swiss-army knife for Data Acquisition - they're fantastic.  However, if the hardware for this system will only ever be used for serial communication, we have dedicated hardware for that as well.

NI ENET 485/2

NI ENET 232/2

NI USB 485/2

NI USB 232/2

NI USB-485

NI USB-232

There are also 4 port versions of the USB and ENET serial devices.

If you are working with I2C or SPI, the 845x line of hardware is directed at those implementations.

If you are working I2C, SPI, or JTAG, we have reference libraries for building those waveforms:

I2C Digital Waveform Reference Library

SPI Digital Waveform Reference Library

JTAG Digital Waveform Reference Library

Additional useful implementation for working with serial may be found in our <link no longer exists>.

Could you tell me more about your application?  
What are the expected I/O rates?  

Is this one of our FPGA modules?

The only immediate point of concern (since an FPGA is involved here), is ensuring that the DAQ hardware chosen can keep up with the output of the FPGA.

cheers

[frastede]

Mathew,

Thank-you for your thorough response! I absolutly agree, the X-Series is a brilliant upgrade for Data Acquisiton.

Unfortunatly, the previous code didn't include FPGA integration, so I would need to write-up the bit-banging and DAQmx code from scratch. Our primary purpose of the DAQ is monitoring and driving various DIO/AO/AI and the FPGA is an added element. I'm simply looking for the easiest solution to read/write to the registers of our FPGA in the LabWindows envionment.

I'm leaning towards treating the FPGA seprate from the DAQ. I'll probably just end up using a SPI to USB module and interfacing with the PC directly.  This should make less work from LabWindows side.

Thanks again!