Beginner Question: How to put 5 V on an output?

Question

Hi everybody,
I am an absolute beginner here, a Biology student that has to do electronics in Labview now...
I want to do as much of this myself as possible, but need truly beginners hints, hoping to be clever enough to put it together myself with your information.
I need to control some outputs, and monitor some inputs. I am focusing on the outputs at the moment.
Questions:
How do I make a block in my block diagram that can put a variable voltage on an output? I need two controls, one that puts a voltage on an output of 0 to 10 V continuously, the other puts a voltage on an output of 0 to 5 V in increments of 0.1 V
Any hints will be highly appreciated. I have Labview 6 to work with. Pointers like 'look at p
age XX of the manual' will do, but descriptions here, or through my mail... anything will be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

In article <[email protected]>,
"Erado" wrote:
> That's the beauty of this, I am not entirely sure (yet) I am going to
> get a good look of the setup in about a month, but they want me to
> prepare a concept VI before then. To me that made little sense, but my
> comments on it hit a brick wall...
Well, for me and my past gigs this has been a very common situation. When
I worked for telecom we would have to develop apps for instruments that we
wouldn't receive for six months. Luckily we had the basic concept of how
they were supposed to run and this was adequate for development. It
sounds like you're in a similar situation.
> What I do know is that over two of the terminals there is a 5V voltage
> applied in steps of 0.1 V. So I should put in something that makes it
> possible for me to control this output in 50 steps of 0.1 V.
Lemme see if I understand you from this post and your first one. You
would like to buid a user interface that includes the following:
1) A boolean control that gives these two options:
a) output a continuous voltage in the range of 0-10 volts b) output a
ramping voltage starting at 0 (or 0.1) volts and ending at
5 volts using 0.1 volt increments with a dwell time of x mseconds
2) A boolean to stop the application
(perhaps another one to pause it)
3) Several numeric controls:
a) numeric control for the output voltage b) numeric control for the
dwell time (optional) c) numeric control for the voltage increments
(optional) for if the
user wants to use values other than 0.1 volts
4) An indicator that shows what the measured output voltage is. This is
good for verifying your output signal. A chart would be nice.
This is a top down approach which is helpful for laying out the
application's user interface. The next thing you want to do is build some
subVIs to simulate your voltage signals. Once you get some hardware you
can simply replace these simulation subVIs with the real ones that
actually communicate the hardware.
I'm not sure if your measuring the output voltage too. I kinda just
assumed this but that would require another subVI. I won't tell you how
to build the subVIs (I can't take all the fun out this) but I hope I've
pointed you in the right direction.
Merry x-mas!
-Kevin
PS: learn how to play with control references. they're very convenient
when you need to update the front panel indicators with data from a subVI
sitting in its own continuous loop. it avoids global variable abuse.