help creating custom waveform to load into Signal Express

[OKors]

I've never had to create a custom wave form before so Im completely new to this process.
Basically I need two output channels. Both channels will have the same waveform structure but one will have a time offset. In other words one will be starting while the other is ending.

Channel 1 waveform would look like this: One sinewave cycle (.25hz) then zero output for one cycle. Repeat.
Channel 2 waveform (meanwhile) would look like this: zero output for one cycle (exactly the duration channel 1 is in its sinewave), then one sinewave cycle (.25hz).

Both repeat continuously but out of phase of eachother. This will be a force/deflection test involving two hydraulic actuators applying a load to two points on the same specimen. Basically creating a walking condition where the customer would apply force to one spot then with the other foot transfer body weight to the second spot.

this is more complicated than what the basic function generator can handle but I have heard of people creating their own waveform in Excel and loading that.
Would this be possible for my application? What would the column structure in excel look like?
I've never created or exported a waveform to excel.

Thanks.

[OKors]

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[shalby22]

Hello OKors,

What if you were to use a Sequence step to separate the two waveforms (with "Run preceding steps before following steps" AND "Allow hardware reuse" checked) and had them output a finite amount of samples, such that each time one step executed a single cycle? It wouldn't be strictly timed as that would be handled in software rather than hardware, but it is a good place to start.

You could also import a signal that you created in Excel as an ASCII file and choose the delimiter (tab, comma) and start/end rows. It would probably have better timing qualities than using a Sequence step. To figure out what the signal would need to look like, I would recommend saving something to an ASCII file first to figure out what formatting SignalExpress would expect as an input.

Have a great weekend,