Can I use any acquistion card with Labview?

[isam]

I have got a non NI acquistion card, how can I use LabVIEW to program it?

[Nirmal_Sharma]

Dear isam,

Surely you can use non NI Acquisition card with Labview if provided with the software Driver from the vendor.

Along with the software driver, you get facility like MAX panel which makes to perform basic test of the card.
Also it includes the various vi which can be used to integrate the measurements from the card into Labview.

Hope this helps. YOur feedbacks are welcome.

Best Regards,
Nirmal

[isam]

Thank you Nirmal Sharma
But are all the software drivers provided by vendors recognized by LabVIEW? In other terms, must these drivers get a satandard architecture or protocol so LabVIEW can communicate with them? Or, if I develop my own acquisition card, how can I write it's driver so LabVIEW can communicate with it?
Best Regards
Isam

[Dennis_Knutson]

Sometimes what you get from the vendor is a DLL (and supporting documentation). From this, you can use LabVIEW's Call Library Function to access the DLL. This should work most of the time but if the author of the DLL has used datatypes that are not supported by LabVIEW, then you might have to write a wrapper in C to do some conversion. If you're lucky, the vendor will provide a set of LabVIEW VIs that they've written that incorporate communication with their DLL. You will not find any card that you will be able to use with MAX or the LabVIEW data acquisition functions. Those rely on NI-DAQ which is strictly for NI manufactured DAQ boards.

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> But are all the software drivers provided by vendors recognized by
> LabVIEW? In other terms, must these drivers get a satandard
> architecture or protocol so LabVIEW can communicate with them? Or, if
> I develop my own acquisition card, how can I write it's driver so
> LabVIEW can communicate with it?

The LV drivers for various NI products are essentially VIs that call
into a user level DLL. That DLL does its work and returns the results
and/or error info to the diagram.

If the board has a DLL that allows it to work, then you can make quick
wrapper VIs to make it fit the LV language a bit better.

There are no architectures or protocols for drivers to replace NI-DAQ or
other NI driver wrappers.

Greg McKaskle

[Nirmal_Sharma]

Mr. isam,

I feel Mr. Dennis knutson's solution is right. You can go with it.

Regards,
Nirmal

[isam]

Now I feel the propositions are right and I get a clear idea. Thank you Nirmal Sharma, Dennis Knutson and Greg McKaskle.

[isam]

I think your propositions are right. Now, I get a clear idea of the qustion. Thank you.