08-04-2010 11:07 AM
How would one go about using a device, connected through USB, in labview that doesn't have a daq board? I have a signal monitor that I've managed to get to work with C++ and was wondering if there was a way to integrate it with Labview at all. I hope that makes sense.
08-04-2010 11:21 AM
It's kind of hard to give any help when you don't mention what the device is (make/mode?).
It could be a virtual com port. It could be through a dll that the board vendor supplies. If you are able to to it in C, how does it do it? With that information, you can figure out how to do it in LV.
08-04-2010 11:39 AM
It's a Suunto Pod. It's used to measure heart rate from multiple heart rate monitors. It comes with a dll file that is needed w/ the C++ program I jerry rigged. They gave me a dev tools file and I just kind of made it do what I wanted. I'd like to incooporate the hardware into Labview though.
http://suunto.com/en-us/Products/Pods-Belts/Suunto-Team-POD/
08-04-2010 11:46 AM
If they've provided a DLL then you can use the Call Library Function Node to call the DLL. You should read the chapter in the LabVIEW Help on calling code from external languages. If it's a C++ DLL you may have problems because LabVIEW only supports C DLL, not C++. A common issue is name mangling. If you do a search on the NI site for "DLL name mangling" you will come across several Knowledge Base articles that discuss this issue. Another common problem is that if the DLL uses complex datatypes (such as structures with strings inside, or pointers to complex structures then you will need to write a wrapper DLL that converts simple datatypes that LabVIEW can handle to the complex datatypes that the DLL uses. Again, there is a wealth of information on the NI site on calling DLLs, so a search will yield lots of information.