LabVIEW VI for CyberGlove

[Ech]

Hello.

I want to use LabVIEW to acquire data from a CyberGlove data collection glove. Since I am new to LabVIEW, I am wondering if anyone has done this before and thus might be able to help me build my VI?

Thank you.

[smercurio_fc]

Well, we will first need to have some more information: What is this CyberGlove? What kind of data does it collect? What kind of interface, if any, does it have as far as communications? What do you need to be able to do? Display data on a graph? Save it to file? Do some sort of analysis? If so, what kind? Is it part of some control system?

[Ech]

Yes, I was not (very )specific 🙂 ..

The CyberGlove is a glove that is used to measure the movements of the digits (i.e. the thumb and the fingers) of the hand. I will be using it for a research project. The glove contains several sensors, placed at the various joints of each of the digits. For a given joint, the data collected by the glove is a voltage output yielded by the corresponding sensor and which is proportional to the angle/position of that joint. Using calibration, this voltage can then be transformed into an "anatomical" joint angle.

The glove connects to a data acquisition computer via a serial port (RS232C, Data Terminal Equipment). What I want to do specifically is to establish a connection between the glove and the computer, then to collect/acquire the data from the glove, and finally to write/save the data to a file.

[smercurio_fc]

The first thing you will need to do is to be able to get the data from the glove. Since you say it connects via an RS-232 connection then there is some form of communication protocol. This means a set of messages to/from the computer. This would be provided in the manual. You should start with seeing if you can establish communication using something like HyperTerminal if you're on Windows, or some other serial port communications program if you're using another operating system. This is to flush out any issues with communication settings and cables before you get into LabVIEW. Then try the serial port examples that ship with LabVIEW.

I assume you have a programming manual for this glove?

[Ech]

Yes, I do have a manual for the glove, which notably includes information on the communication between the glove and a computer. I also knew that the glove was working properly with the serial port, in other words that a communication could be established. What I need(ed) to do is to implement this communication in LabVIEW. And I think that I was actually able to do it. Notably, the "Basic Serial Write and Read.vi" example in LabVIEW proved useful in that respect. So, I am hoping that my problem is solved..

[Ech]

Sorry, I forgot: thank you for your help, "smercurio_fc".

[smercurio_fc]

No problem. Post back if you have any further questions.

[ChrisBaten]

Hi smercurio_fc and Ech,

I'm currently working on the same problem. I'm writing a labview vi to extract the data from the cyberglove. So far, I mannaged to receive a dataflow via the serial port (using a the methodolgy described in "Basic Serial Write and read.vi"). The problem now is that I don't know how to interpret and treat this dataflow in order to exctract the numbers I'm after.

In the SDK glove demo there is a small program "GetGloveData" that gives the numbers I want to obtain by my labview program. I'm not that great with C-code.

@ Ech: In another topic you gave an example .VI "DAQ device with CyberGlove.vi 303 KB" Here you write (visa write) some specific codes to the serial port. What are these codes for? Do I need to use those also? 

Can someone help me out here? Maybe providing me a sample VI. (Ech, I think you made exactly what I'm looking for...)

Kind Regards,

Rob 

[Kristoff2]

Rob,

The manual for the CyberGlove should contain the command set and the expected return values.  If you know the format of the return value you should be able to parse out the individual values you want using LabVIEW functions.  The functions you need to use will depend on the data you need to parse.  The 'Scan From String' VI provides an easy to use but powerful method of parsing data from a string.  Please let us know if you have more specific questions about parsing your data.

Regards,

Sam K

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

www.ni.com/support

[ChrisBaten]

Hello Sam,

Thank you for your quick response. The Cyberglove manual is in C-code (which I'm not very good at..). (A lot of functions appear to be missing: e.g getRawData which should give me the latest data etc.) I don't know the format of the return value or the data format (how can I find that in this reverse engineering process?). Scan from string will therefore not work...

The best way to get what I want is call the functions in a proper way in labview.. but there is no SDK/manual for labview...

Anyone out there that worked with the cyberglove in combination with labview?..

Regards,

Rob