Need Help on Retrieving data from Serial Port

[devileric]

Hi,

I am writing a LabView program to measure signal strength. I have a set-top box that can generate 1 kHz tone with an audio output (female XLR head). I need to interface this set-top box with my lap-top using serial connection and able to get results from the set-top box through the serial port (either has tone or no tone). How can I do it? Do I need an instrument between the laptop and the set-top box which converts the audio output to data format so that I can use labview to retrieve the info? If so, any suggestions? Then once this is done, how can I retrieve info from this set-top box?

Anyone pls reply asap..
Thanks a lot.

YOurs sincerely,
eRic

[JoshuaP]

A tone is an analog signal while a serial port is a digital signal. That means you will need some sort of analog to digital converter. You can try to make one, but it probably wouldn't be very accurate or you could try to find some sort of analog to serial converter, but it will probably be to slow. To measure a 1kHz signal you need to be measuring at least 10kS/s. I would suggest you just use one of the USB-6009.

There cheap, accurate, and fast. The only problem is that they connect to a USB port instead of a serial port, but your laptop should have a USB port. To read the data you would use the NI-DAQmx Base driver in LabVIEW.

-Josh