Im lost, new LabView user. How do I do all of this?

[joelklabo]

    I dont know where to start so I am just going to describe what I am trying to do and hopefully someone can point me in the right direction:

I am building an apparatus to measure the CO2 concentration from a set of six seperate jars (expanding to 42 soon if this works). There will be wet air coming into one of the tubes into the jar while another will go to a container witha Pasco CO2 sensor in it. There are valves in the second line of each jar allowing the gas sample to be taken from each seperately.

I attatched a diagram by the way if you would like to see it.

I am trying to get LabView to open the valve for the first jar, take data for a set amount of time, clear the chamber by opening a valve to purge gas, then open the valve for the second jar and repeat.... all the while I need to be taking data and saving them seperately in their own files depending on what jar is currently being tested. Ideally i would like to have graphs displaying the concentration vs. time for each sample jar. This experiment should go on uninterrupted for 45 days....   I do not know where to dtart with this, any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am using an NI PCI-6512 board witha cb-100 connector block, and a USB-6009

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/45/187716402_0d145d2e10.jpg?v=0">
<img src="http://static.flickr.com/60/187716403_7aefeb8d62.jpg?v=0">

[kehander]

I'd say the first thing to do is to look at how LabVIEW can interact with your valve controls and CO2 sensors. Did this hardware come with any examples you can look at? Do any of the examples that ship with LabVIEW pertain to what you are trying to do?

If you're completely new to LabVIEW, you should of course start by looking at the Getting Started guide.
http://digital.ni.com/manuals.nsf/websearch/07F9CD824F66237A86257046006F7C5D

[tbob]

The 6512 is a digital out board.  You can search the examples for Digital I/O to see how to set up and work the DIO.  This will be used to open and close the valves.  Look in the functions palette called NI Measurements - Data Aquisition - Digital I/O.  Here you will see built in functions to configure the DIO and write to the DIO.  First you configure it, then you write to it to open and close the valves.  When done, you clear the DIO to close all the valves.

How is your sensor connected to your test system?  Is it RS232, GPIB, other?  This makes a big difference.  There are examples in Labview on each of these communications methods.

[joelklabo]

I am using a Pasco Cl-6561 CO2 sensor and i had to cut the cable to connect the device. So, the data is coming into the USB-6009 as a voltage. I am having the most trouble right now with getting the 6512 to write to the valves in a specified sequence after a certain amount of time has elapsed on each valve. I was trying to use the task out to trigger the next valve but aparently to write to a valve the input has to be boolean, and it is 1-D array boolean? so, ideally I would just write to the first valve and time how long it would stay open, then when the timer closes the valve it would simultaneously open the next one. I am also confused about what to put into the loops and such. Thanks again for the help.

[tbob]

Here is a small example on how to write to a digital out.  This example writes to the DIO 3 times, and lights an LED each time.  I am assuming your DO output lines are connected to the valve controllers and that DO-0 goes to the first valve, DO-1 goes to the second, and so on.