Trigger for timing hub

[rhytovick]

I am currently using an NI USB-6356 DAQ with 8 analog inputs and 8 digital. All 8 analog inputs are being used and I wanted to implement a trigger for data collection. However, my trigger (the button on the power supply) is also analog. I was curious if there was another way to add a trigger convert my analog trigger to digital so it could be in the digital input area. Attached is a copy of the current block diagram.

[Bob_Schor]

You say your Trigger is "the button on the Power Supply".  This is curious -- what does the button do?  Are you turning on the Power Supply to generate the voltages for the circuits you are trying to measure?

How about a "Virtual Button" on your Front Panel that you "push" with a Mouse Click?  You could "wire" this button to the input of a Digital Out line (you have 8, unused, so you can spare one).  You connect the output pin of this Digital Out line to the Trigger pin for your A/D with another "wire" (use copper for this wire -- it needs to carry a voltage).

I have another suggestion for your Block Diagram.  Did you notice how "messy" it was to use the (horrible) Dynamic Data Wire?  You have an Array of Waveforms -- what data structure goes "naturally" with Arrays?  [Hint -- a --- Loop].  What are all those (awful, opaque) Express VIs doing?  Why, they are applying a linear transformation, i.e. setting a Gain and Offset for each Channel (but who can tell that?).  What a pain entering the 8 Gains and 8 Offsets -- wouldn't it be easier to have an array of Gains and an array of Offsets, one for each channel?  Might pair nicely with the Array of Waveforms.  Here's a snippet showing a constant Gain of 1 and Offset of 0 (OK, I'm a little lazy ...).

Processing Array of Waveforms

One final thing -- your VI had two Write to Measurement File functions right on top of each other -- I discovered the second as I was moving your code around.  Sometimes "hiding" functions like this leads to "hard-to-find" errors.

Bob Schor