Don't know what I am doing, Please help!

[mslone2]

Hello everyone,

Graduate student here that is in a bit of a pickle and hoping someone can help me out. I recently have taking over a project from a previous group of students that involves taking temperature readings of a solar panel using a National Instruments DAQ. Before I can get to the actual meat of my project a need to collect a large amount of data. The previous group had a labview code set up to collect the data, and write it to a file. The problem being, the labview file that was passed on to me seems to be an older version of the final code.

Luckily, I do have a picture of the schematic of the final version. Unfortunately this is my first time using labview and I am not at all familiar with the program. I am hoping someone can look at the pictures I have and let me know which functions I need to search for, as it is not immediately obvious to me just by looking at it.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

[RavensFan]

First.  Let's correct some terminology.  Schematics are electrical wiring diagrams.  The pictures you show are called block diagrams in wiring.  They do have some resemblance, and the colored lines are called wires.  But you have a block diagram, not a schematic.  The other term people mistakenly is "circuit".

The main difference between you two images relates to the function used to write to file.  In older versions of LabVIEW, it is called Write to Spreadsheet File.  In LabVIEW 2015 and newer, it was upgraded a bit and renamed to Write Delimited Spreadsheet.  Now don't confuse "spreadsheet" with Excel.  Neither of these functions create Excel files  (nor the read counterparts read Excel files).  They create text files with the data elements saved in a table-like format separated by delimiters.  If you open up an older VI using the old version in LV15 or 16, you'll get the deprecated version which looks the same but with a red X over.  It will work just like it did before.  But you can replace it with the newer version and rewire the connector panel (which is laid out a little differently.)

If you have specific questions about the other elements, point them out and ask.  Also, I would recommend looking at the online LabVIEW tutorials
LabVIEW Introduction Course - Three Hours
LabVIEW Introduction Course - Six Hours

[Bob_Schor]

If your story is accurate, then the "previous students" would have generated LabVIEW code, which can be recognized by the file extension, ".vi" (for Virtual Instrument).  Of course, if Windows "hides known extensions", you might not see this, but you should see files with a File Type of "LabVIEW Instrument" (or other LabVIEW "things").

You should also find the PC they were using that had LabVIEW installed.  Is it installed on your PC?

Do you have any LabVIEW experience?  If not, go tell your Professor/Thesis Advisor that you'll need at least a week to get up to speed.  Take all the Tutorials you can find online, and also see if there's someone at your school who really knows LabVIEW (look in Engineering or Basic Science departments, ask Site Licensing who comes to them in August asking for the latest Disks, ask around) and see if you can get several multi-hour tutorials directly from them.

Bob Schor