Counter Pin-Outs for 6025E

Question

Greetings,
Regarding the 6025E w/ SCB-100, what are the normal I/O pin-outs one uses for the 2 counters? DIO 6 and 7 can control the counter. GPCTR0_OUT and GPCTR1_OUT I presume are the pinouts for pulse trains,etc. Is this correct? Would GPCTR0_SOURCE and GPCTR0_GATE then function as inputs?
My immediate use for these pinouts would be a frequency input TTL count on counter 0 and a PWM signal output from counter 1. I'm finding the information in the 6025E user manual quite confusing. Would somebody please be so kind to point me to examples or a discussion that detail which type of pin-out to use where?

Answer 1

By default, GPCTRX_SOURCE is the source and GPCTRX_GATE the gate for the counter X (X = 0 or 1). But you can use other PFI lines instead of these defaults inputs.
The outputs cannot be set to other pins than GPCTRX_OUT.
DIO6 is the default auxiliary line of counter 0 and DIO7 of counter 1. They will set the direction of counting when the counter is configured for position measurement (UP/DOWN counter).
If not already done, I strongly recommend you to install the improved counter palette.
There are a lot of examples that ships with LV. They will help you to start your counter application. For LV7 : LV Menu --> Help --> Find examples --> Hardware Input and Output --> Traditional DAQ --> Counters --> DAQ-STC.
Measure Frequency (DAQ-STC).vi not only shows how to measure a frequency but also how to set non default values for source and gate.
Both counters of the PCI-6025E are needed to measure a frequency and therefore it will not be possible to run another counter task at the same time. One counter is configured for simple event counting and will therefore count the pulses on its source. The counting is gated by the second counter that is used to generate a single pulse.
Frequency [Hz] = Number of pulses / Measure time [s]
The duration of the measurement is very accurate because it is given by hardware (internal timebase of the counter).
If the frequency of the signal is low, it will be more accurate to measure the period of the signal --> Measure Period (DAQ-STC).vi.
This method requires only one counter. The source of the counter is the internal timebase and the external signal is used to gate the counter. (number of pulses of the internal timebase between two rising or falling edges of the signal).
The numerous advanced DAQ counters functions allow you to go very deep in detail and I recommend you to go through some of the examples that ships with LV or that you can find on ni.com.