There are several options, depending on what you want to do with your data, listed by easiest to hardest.
- Read it into a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel, OpenOffice Calc) - Use the Write LabVIEW Measurement File Express VI and pick the tab separated text format. I know it is not binary, but it is the most compatible form of data storage - anything can read it.
- Read it later into LabVIEW, DIAdem, or Excel - Use the Write LabVIEW Measurement File Express VI or the Waveform Storage VIs and pick the TDMS format (not TDM). This stores the data in a proprietary binary format optimized for streaming to disk. This is the highest performing option for large numbers of waveforms simultaneously. This requires LV8.2 or above. Use TDM with earlier versions. A plug-in is required for Excel, but it is available on the NI website.
- Use the data with one of NI's waveform editors or soft front panels - Use the NI-HWS VIs. This is the highest performing option for small numbers of waveforms. Since it is based on HDF5, it can also be read by other programs (e.g. Matlab, Mathematica). It also has compression and supports file sizes over 2GBytes in LV versions before 8.0.
- Use the data in a custom fashion - There are very few instances that cannot be handled by the above methods, but if you want to roll your own system, use the LabVIEW file primitives. Save your t0, dt, and waveform in a sequential manner and it will be easy to get them from disk. If the t0 is in timestamp format, you can decode it on the other end by knowing its format. The timestamp is a fixed point 128 bit number with the decimal point in the center. It is the time in seconds since midnight, Jan 1, 1904 GMT.
If you need more information, let us know.
