Serail DAQ general inquiry

[andyzoumas]

I have a lasermike that we use in an application to read the outside diameter of our product. The machine has a serial output and I have harnesed the data via hyperterminal so I know it works. Now I want to be able to, for starters, put it into a simple labview graph. the data flow is continous and it needs to be done in real time(meaning that the operator needs to see the graph while the process is going on). If anyone has any info as to where I should start, that would be helpful. Specifically, do I need to put all this data into a file first to read it? I am new to Labview and all suggestions would be very greatly appreciated.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Put a VISA read inside of a while loop and wire the output to the graph. Look through the graph examples for how to continously update the graph.

[Albert.Geven]

You have to play around with opening a serial device, reading from it and translating the strings read to values
and after that it is very easy to update a realtime graph in labview.
I suggest try to play with the serial visa vi's to see what you get in and then built a function that reads until a specific endcharacter and translates this to a value.

In labview 6 opening of the port is not strictly needed but helps.