monitor switches throughout process

[HTMike]

Hello:
I'm evaluating LabView to see if it can control a machine that currently runs in DOS using C.
I have sketched out an overall design of the state machine. Basically it will have to:
1.) prompt user to press two hardware switches on the side of the unit.
2.) Fire a solenoid
3.) at same time start a motor moving
4.) monitor a limit switch while moving to stop it
5.) fire another solenoid
6.) wait for an indicator to say ok for next step. This is only about 25 ms
7.) fire another solenoid, dwell for about 100ms
8.) start motor in opposite direction and start to collect strain gauge data
8a.) this is abou 800ms worth of data
9.) oh yeah, if the user lets go of one or two of those hardware switches - abort.
9a.) only 1 or
2 seconds have passed.
10.) Am I mad to think I can do this in LabView???

[Dennis_Knutson]

I think LabVIEW can do it, I'm not so sure about Windows. One advantage about DOS is that there's only one thing going on at a time. It's not really deterministic but better than worrying about all of the tasks and interupts that can happen with Windows (or Mac, Sun, Linux for that matter). Doing this with LabVIEW RT should be a lot more reliable.