Continuous Data Acquisition after a single Analog Trigger

[Arul Thangavel]

Hi there,

I am using a PCI-MIO-16XE-50 card on a Macintosh to acquire data from an National Instruments BNC-2090 digital to analog converter. I need to acquire this data in a continuous fashion, and I have purchased the NIDAQ Tools software for Igor Pro. I plan on using the FIFO Macro to record my data.

However, there is one complication. I have another application that I need to coordinate with. I need to have my experiment set up in such a way that when this program (ViewPoint, eye tracking software) begins recording data, only then does the data acquisition start from the NIDAQ card. ViewPoint has an analog out option and a serial out. I was wondering whether I could use either of these outputs using sof
tware or hardware to trigger the NIDAQ Tools FIFO Macro to start recording.

I have been fooling around with the PFI0/Trig 1 input on the BNC-2090, but how can I make it so that once this input receives any data, then continuous data acquisition will begin. Does anyone have any ideas for how I could coordinate these two programs? Other paradigms could be useful as well, any help!

Thanks,

Arul Thangavel

[Filipe A.]

Arul;

The way you need to configure the DAQ task on the 2090 will depend on what type of signal the other device will send out.

If the external device send out a TTL type of signal, you can configure the 2090 to do a Digital Triggered Analog Input acquisition, setting the digital trigger to be received on the PFI0 line.

In case the signal sent out by the external device is analog, you can configure the external device to do an Hardware Analog Triggered Analog Input task.

You can fing examples showing how to configure both tasks, both in Labview and NI-DAQ on line help.

Hope this helps.
Filipe A.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments