stepper motor control

[rrn]

Hi,

 Am new to LabView. In our project we have a filter wheel (A wheel with 6 slots). I would like to drive this filter wheel using a stepper motor in LabView.The aim is the wheel should rotate and each slot should come in front of a camera and remain there till the image is taken(Already I have the program for camera image acquisition using Labview).After this the wheel should rotate and next slot should come infront. My doubts are

  1) Is the stepper motor available in the market sufficient to use with Labview

  2) I am using LabView 7.1 version. For me higher version  is not possible at the moment.

  3) Should I require any extra drivers for the above said application

          With regards,

                             RRN

[JTG_Wilson]

Hello RRN,

The answer to your first question is probably yes, but to be sure I would need to know what hardware you are using to connect the stepper motor to your computer, from this we can compare the voltage and current that the stepper motor needs to what the hardware can provide.

If the hardware is not able to produce enough power then you might need an external power supply that is connected to the stepper motor using a set of transistors or a darlington array, this way you can send out the control code for your stepper motor from your computer but not have the power drained from your computer. (picture of an example circuit for a darlington array is attached)

LabVIEW 7.1 should be fine, as long as it is compatable with your operating system and we have drivers that support the hardware you are using and LabVIEW 7.1.

The drivers that you require to interface with any National Instruments hardware are avaiable online if you go to NI.com and choose Support > Download Software 

You won't be able to use the latest versions of the drivers since you are using an old version of LabVIEW, but if you let me know what hardware you are using then I can see if we have drivers that support that hardware and LabVIEW 7.1

So if you can tell me what NI hardware you are using and send me the datasheet of the stepper motor then I will be able to assisst you further.

I look forward to hearing back from you.