Hardware timed digital I/O on DAQ card ?

[SteveP]

Is there a way to use counters on a general E series DAQ card (PCI-MIO-16XE50) to do hardware timed digial I/O ? Once I start a hardware timed analog input operation (100 Hz), I need to concurrently generate digital I/O that is asynchronous to the analog input. One digital channel needs to be toggled every few hundred milliseconds in a non-repeated pattern. Software timing could be used in the analog input loop, but I am concerned about missing pattern changes if the user browses a network, opens a large file, etc.

[Filipe A.]

Steve;

It's definetely a good idea to use the counters of your DAQ board to generate a hardware timed digital line. You can synchronize the beginning of the Analog Input with the beginning of the counting task, and set the counter to repeat the counting, by changing the count value where the counter will start (instead of start at zero), then set the counter to restart the counting when the terminal count is reached.
I'm attaching a good Application Note which states and gives a good example on how to synchronize multiple DAQ tasks. You can use that as a start point for your application.
Hope this helps.
Filipe

[SteveP]

Filipe,

What may work is continuous pulse train generation. I would need to be able to change the delay time and the pulse time for each cycle (these times would be hundreds of milliseconds, so there would be enough software time to do it). I think once the pulse time started, I would have to change the count value to be used for the next delay time. Then when that next delay time starts, I would have to change the count value for the next pulse time. Does the hardware allow this to be done ?

I already can synchronize the pulse generation initiation with the beginning of data acquisition.