How do I output three digital waveforms at once?

Question

I posted this in Digital I/O, but now I think it's actually more appropriate here because it's not a hardware question. I need to output three digital waveforms at a relatively low frequency, 71.9 Hz. I have a PCI DAQ card, the 6024E and am using the NI-DAQmx functions to try to do this. My program basically generates the square wave that I want, and converts it into a digital wave. I do this 3 times for the three separate waves, and then I combine them into an array and send them to my DAQ functions, which are in a while loop so I can get continuous output. My problem is that the waveform that the DAQ is actually outputting is not what I want. It's outputting a wave that has the same duty cycle (approximately) but the frequency is over 2 kilohertz. It's not like this all the time; after it outputs about 7 cycles of this wave, it goes to logic low for a long time, and then repeats itself. When I probe the digital waveform right before it goes into the DAQ functions, it's running correctly at 71.9 Hertz. Am I doing anything wrong with the DAQ functions or the sampling information? Thanks in advance.
-- Josh Matloff

Answer 1

Hello Josh,
I'm pretty sure that the reason that your digital waveforms are not being produced at the correct frequency is because your digital output is not associated with any sort of timing. Unfortunately, with an E series board you can only do software timed digital operations. This means that the frequency at which the values on your digital lines will be updated depends on how fast/often your computer executes the DAQmx Write that is inside of your while loop. If you have an M series board, you can actually correlate the DIO operations with another subsytems clock (AI/AO sample clock, etc.) which means that you can acheive hardware-timed DIO. In the event that you do not have access to an M series board, I think that AnalogKid2DigitalMan was spot on that you would want to use counters to generate pulse trains (that is if your digital waveforms have a constant duty cycle and period). Depending on what the DAQ board is outputting to, you might also want to consider using the Analog Output channels to generate your digital waveform. As long as you continue to use the digital lines on the 6024E, there is not really a way to guarantee the timing of when the digital lines will be updated. You might be able to get close, but you will probably see some "hiccups", especially if your computer needs to service interrupts or give processing time to another application. And lastly, heed geckoee's advice and don't forget to properly close out your tasks! Putting in some error handling may also help in the debugging process.
Take care,
E.Lee
Eric
DE For Life!