The NI 5402 is a Function Generator. I'm afraid that if you want a sine wave that increases its amplitude smoothly, you won't be able to achieve it with this instrument. What you can achieve, is an increase in ampliture in steps. For example, every second you can increase the amplitude 1/6th of what you need. Will this do? There may be glitches when you change the amplitude, or you can use the Digital Gain property in order to change the amplitude digitally only without touching the analog front end, thus avoiding glitches.
In order to get a sine wave whose amplitude increases smoothly, you will need an Arbitrary Waveform Generator. You create the waveform in your program (a sine wave multiplied by a ramp) and download this waveform to the instrument, then generate it. The NI 5412 or NI 5421 would do the trick.
Marcos Kirsch
Chief Software Engineer
NI Driver Software
