Strain gauge Full bridge, DAQ, Issues Combinator

[straingaugenoob]

I purchased the 350 ohms strain gauges from Digikey, a vendor of MicroMeasurements. I successfully attached them on the beam. I'm in the process of learning more about them for some future projects. 

I am using a DAQ with Labview to gather strain data. My issue is that I am trying to build a "combinator" to have the four strain gauges average to one value that goes into the DAQ. When I put the voltmeter on the strain gauges, I get rather interesting values that I don't think are correct. I attached images of the strain configuration. Strain gauge 2 and 4 are in the front of the beam and 1 and 3 in the back. The "signal -" and "signal +" that go into the DAQ reads 2.46V for both of them. When I place the voltmeter on the strain gauges, they read -2.6mV for #1 and #2, 2.44V for #4, and -2.44V for #3. The excitation voltage is 5V. I want to know if this seems correct because it doesn't make sense to me. 

Labview gives me "error-200088 occurred at DAQ Assistant" 

The point of this project is for me to get a deeper understanding. Thank you for any help you give. 

[RavensFan]

Do you have a good text book that talks about strain gauge bridges?  You should be looking at that.

We can't help you because the most important thing you didn't show us, how you wired up the gauges and which gauges are which in your diagram.  You haven't told us what you are trying to measure.  I'm guessing it is bending strain in the beam.

Even with a wiring diagram, it doesn't mean you wired up correctly to the wiring diagram.  Your description for the voltages you measured doesn't make sense.  Do you mean that is the voltage you measured when placing the leads across each of the gauges?  If so, it sounds like you might have a short in your wiring since each gauge should read nominally 2.5V across it.   Near 0 if you read across the bridge from the signal + to signal - leads, and 5 volts when you read from Exc + to Exc-.  Check all your solder joints.

Did you read the error message for error -200088?  It says, "Task specified is invalid or does not exist".  So something is wrong inside your DAQ assistant, but you didn't attach your VI.

Your error message says you have a software problem.  Your voltages say you might have a hardware problem also, but it is unclear.