SDI12

[cmpowell]

SDI-12 is a serial protocol utilized by various environmental instrumentation vendors ex. YSI.  Has anyone ever used labview in a SDI-12 master capacity?

[Brian F.]

Hello.

Thank you for posting to the NI Discussion Forums. 

While I have not used SDI-12 with LabVIEW, I would be happy to do whatever I can to help you out with this application.  Did you have a specific question or a general question that I can help answer? 

My understanding of SDI-12 is that it is a serial communication that takes place at 1200 baud over a standard RS-232 port.  Our VISA API does allow for 1200 baud transfer rate so our serial devices along with LabVIEW should provide a good application setup.  The fact that SDI-12 seems to use 12 V signals could make some type of voltage translator necessary.  As long as there aren't any other quirks to the implementation of SDI-12 that I don't see, I think using LabVIEW and a serial port would suit your app just fine. 

Brian F
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[cmpowell]

Thanks for the reply Brian,
    I would have replied sooner but I've been the field all week.  I've got a number of YSI water quality sondes that I use SDI-12 to communicate with at remote installations.  However in all cases the SDI-12 master is a Campbell datalogger driving a number of other sensors as well.  The YSI's have to come back to the shop for maintenance about once a month and I'd like to configure a PC/Labview app to test the SDI-12 interface as part of thier monthly checkup (I've no Campbell loggers on the bench).  It seemed pretty simple to me to get this running, so I posted primarly to see if anybody else had done this and could tell me if I was on a fools errand.  When and if I get it working I'll post the vi and any schematic's for future reference.

Again thanks for the offer of help.

later
cp

[dirtN3rd]

did you get this program working? I would be interested as I have to setup some moisture sensors that are setup as SDI-12 comms

Thx

DN