I am a total Noob when it comes to DAQ so please bear with me and help me with suggestiions on which NI USB DAQ to buy. I am biochemist and I have an old HPLC machine (basically a chemical purifying/seperation machine) I need to control by writing a labview program. I have labview 2013 and have some basic familiarity with it, and have used very easy VIs like blinking LEDs using arduino interface.
My current project needs me to:
1) control the flow rates on two pumps using their remote controller and vary their flow rates by varying voltages (0-10V) at not higher than 3 mA input current. basically, I need to be able to vary voltages on two analog pins. I am attaching the manual for the pump for more info. The pinout on the remote controller is on page 16/17 of the manual.
2) I need to read analog voltage outputs from these two pumps (which measures the hydrostatic pressure) and save it to something like in .csv file.
3) lastly, I need to read a analog output from a UV detector which will be in mV range and plot it and/or save that to .csv file .
There are a bunch of NI DAQ USB devices which seems like they can do this job, my problem is that dont know enough to reliably make a judgement on which one to buy for this project. My budget is limited and I would definately like to do it with as cheap a DAQ as possible since we have multiple instruments like this, and we are planning to get rid of ancient 1990s computers running the original software and replace it with a USB DAQ device coupled with a labview program on a modern PC. The HPLC machines are far apart hence we run them on individual PCs instead of running a bunch on one computer through a DAQ device.
I know its a whole bunch of questions, but I'll be glad for any guidance on this. also, to do the things I just described, how difficult do you guys think the VI would be if I use a NI DAQ and hopefully dont have any driver/communication issues.
