Basics of using a DAQ....Please Help

[MrB.]

Hello,

I am a newbie at this DAQ stuff. I have a PCI DAQ in my PC, that is measuring signals from an accelerometer. I need to read each channel of the DAQ and then process the data into usable information. I have no experience using DAQ boards.
I am assuming that the best way to retrieve the channel data is using some kind of driver.

Is there a generic driver for this task or is it board specific?

Is there other code that can be written to retrieve that DAQ channel data, without the driver?

I am using LV 7.1

-MrB

[Dennis_Knutson]

If you have a DAQ board from NI, then there are two possible drivers. One is called DAQmx and the otehr is called traditional DAQ or just NI-DAQ. DAQmx is the latest driver from NI and can be used with newer boards. Older boards may not be supported by DAQmx so you will have to use traditional DAQ. To check to see which version to use, you can look up your board at http://www.ni.com/support/daq/versions_pci_pxi.htm. If DAQmx and traditional are both listed, use DAQmx. Functions for both are found on the NI Measurements>Data Acquisition (traditional DAQ) and NI Measurements>DAQmx palettes. If you use DAQmx, you also have the option to use the DAQ Assistant which will automate the code generation.

There is a shipping document called the LabVIEW Measurements Manual. This can be opened from Help>Search the LabVIEw Bookshelf. There is a lot of shipping examples for both DAQmx and traditional DAQ. There are also app notes, tutorials, and additional examples at http://zone.ni.com/devzone/devzone.nsf/webcategories/AC30AA52255BFA2386256AB7006B5AE6 .