Can I use LabView to measure light or laser in a fiber?

[Armando]

I am looking for an easy way to make optical power measurements.

[Lab Viewer]

Yes, you can ... but not labview is the most important part of your setup. You need an optical power meter to take the measurements. In this case, you can access the value via RS232/GPIB/Parallel (it depends on meter configuration) from LV or other environment.
Another way to do it (based on detector + DAQcard) is presented by National Instruments in "Lowering the Cost of Optical Power Measurements" [http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/2d17d611efb58b22862567a9006ffe76/c4b5d191792b4b3586256a64004bf230?OpenDocument]. In this case LV is recommended in order to access the DAQ card easier.
Hope this helps
p.s.: choosing the instrument depends on what type of measurements you need

[Dorian Grey]

The easiest way really depends on what resources you have available.
If you have an optical power meter, that has an computer interface
(say GPIB), and if it has drivers written for it, then it can be easy.
Otherwise, there will be some development time for a
custom/non-mainstream optical power meters.

For example, power meters, from Newport, Agilent or Coherent will have
nice drivers written for them (maybe not Coherent...). If you get a
simple power meter, say from Thorlabs, and connect it to your DAQ, you
can have a fairly nice power meter. The meter may run you a couple of
hundred dollars, whereas the other meters will cost at least a couple
of thousand dollars. If time is cheaper, the Thorlabs (or other BNC
Si/GaAs/InGaAs detectors) with a DAQ should be th
e cheapest.

One expensive way, that I discovered after I started working as a
Labview programmer, was to have an image acquisition program look at a
hand-held power meter, and record the numerical values it images off
the meter! One would think if the engineer could set up such a system,
that logging data off a 'connected' power meter would be cake. The
IMAQ technique had a short life...

Of course, you can always post and see if someone's already done the
footwork for more specific optical power meters.

Hope this helps.

-Dorian



Armando wrote in message news:<50650000000800000021300000-1004225886000@exchange.ni.com>...
> I am looking for an easy way to make optical power measurements.