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Use USB-6501 to Control Outdoor Christmas Tree Lights

I have an outdoor Christmas tree which uses 16 LED rope lights and 4 same rope lights formed star with 8 sides on top (see attached picture). I setup/use it every year, but only either on or off all together.

So I am thinking make it a little bit more interesting this year: use a USB-6501 to control it. I can use at least 20 digital out to drive 20 solid state relays and keep the remaining 4 as digital in for control. I will make some time sequence to make lights move/dance and use a loop to cycle. The controls (push buttons) can be used to stop at one particular sequence I like or pick several sequences and loop among them, change time constant and so on.

But since the last time I used LabView was 30 years ago, I need some help to set this box up. Such as where to find some examples, especially how to achieve best visual effect with time constant, etc.

If you have done anything similar, please point me to the right direction. Thanks!

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Message 1 of 8
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I do not have much experience in this particular type of application. But, I was able to dig up a forum post that handles LED controls and cycles. You could try and adapt some of the information given in the post while creating controls that could be modified for your time constant and state of your state machine which would correlate to a specific light display pattern and change based on your inputs. 

 

Tutorial: State Machines

http://www.ni.com/tutorial/7595/en/

Relevant Forum Post

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Turning-on-a-set-of-LEDs/td-p/3677857?profile.language=en

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Message 2 of 8
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Thank you for pointing me to the right direction! This can get me started and ask more questions later.

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I am having my first difficulty: I tried to lay these 16 LEDs on a circle and found it's difficult. So I created a circle and pasted it in. But now I found I can't make those created LEDs shown on top of this pasted picture. If I create news ones, they will show on top. But how to show the existing ones on top of this picture? Thanks!

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This picture will show you what you are looking for! click the picture and send it to the back.

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Thank you very much! That's the only button I didn't click to check...

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Here is how it looks like now:Circle3.JPG

I think I only need 2 channels for control: one (Boolean 23) is to stop at a particular sequence and the other one (Boolean 24) is to stop the sequences and return to initial state which is all lights on.

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Finally I can work on this again...

I have created this VI, plugged in USB-6501, installed NI-DAQMX 18.1 drivers. Now I forgot how to configure it into my VI and assign all the channels (30 years faded memory...)

 

Could anybody please remind me? I am reading this LabVIEW Data Acquisition Basics Manual (January 1998 Edition) right now and hope somebody could jump start me faster. Thanks!

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