What is a LabVIEW driver? How to write a LabVIEW driver?

[Sivakkumar]

I am new to LabVIEW and data acquistion.  I have a requirement to build LabVIEW drivers for data acquistion cards.

How do I get LabVIEW evaluation copy?  Where can I find LabVIEW driver specification/information?

Siva

[Dennis_Knutson]

You can get an evaluation copy or try version 7.1 online. As far as drivers, what type of driver are you talking about? Is this for a non-NI DAQ board? If it is, do you already have the windows driver (i.e. a DLL) and need to create a LabVIEW interface to it? If it's an NI DAQ board, then the drivers already exist and you can create application programs with LabVIEW. A few more details would be nice such as the exact nature of the DAQ boards and what your task is.

[Sivakkumar]

Hi Dennis,

    I got the evaluaton copy of LabVIEW 7 Express.  Trying to understand.

    It is a

[Sivakkumar]

Sorry!  The previous reply was accidentally posted after editing just a line.

Thanks a lot for the reply.

I got the evaluation copy of LabVIEW 7 Express.

I am not sure exactly what is non-NI DAQ and NI DAQ?

This is a device with analogue and digital input/output, counter/timers.  These devices should be accessible from LabVIEW.  What needs to be done for that?  It has some driver, but it does not expose all the features of the device.

What are the Instrument Drivers and Plug and Play Instrument Drivers?  What is the difference between them?

Once again thanks for giving your time.

Siva

[Dennis_Knutson]

An NI DAQ board is a data acquisition board from National Instruments. Who exactly is the manufacturer of your board? What is the model number?

Assuming that the board is not from NI, then the manufacturer provides a low level driver (usually a DLL) that you have to access from LabVIEW. This is done with the Call Library Function Node on the Advanced palette. In order for this to work, you need detailed documentation on the DLL from the vendor. This will include a description of each function in the DLL and the calling parameters. Go to Help>Search the LabVIEW Bookshelf> and open the "Using External Code in LabVIEW" document for details on using the Call Library Function Node. Note that using this is usually not a trivial task and I wouldnt' necessary recomend it for a beginner but it could be done. If you're lucky, you may find someone here who has already done this for your particular board. That's why it's important that your provide this information.

Instrument/Plug&Play drivers usually refer to instruments such as scopes, meters, function generators, etc. that are connected to the PC with GPIB/USB/Serial/Ethernet interfaces. The protocols for communication with these instruments is much simpler and usually consist of sending text strings to the instrument.