How to combine Digital Output, a delay and Analog Input in a fast loop

Question

I need to develop a process loop that runs at least at 250 Hz that performs a Digital output, than a delay of 50 microseconds and than an analog input of all the channels. All will be done using ATI MIO 64E3 card. Of course, the acquired data will be processed, displayed and saved. The loop will be running for several minutes until user stops it.

Answer 1

The fastest and most precise timing will occur if you use hardware timing. You can apply hardware timing to analog input on the E Series boards, but not the digital lines. Let's focus on the analog input first. Continuous waveform scanning uses a scan clock, which can be the board's internal one or an external one which you apply. If you want to scan all the channels 50 microseconds after a digital rising edge, then you need an external signal to signify that scan clock.
The E Series boards also have 2 counter/timers onboard that you can use for this purpose. You can set up a retriggerable pulse generation operation, where the counter receives a trigger and then on the user specifications, produces a pulse. You can have that route to the analog input scan clock.
The trigger signal for the counter is that digital pulse. As I mentioned earlier, there is no hardware timing for the digital lines on an E Series board. We do have other digital boards (653x family) that have hardware timed operations if precision is important. If you are satisfied with software's resolution (in the milliseconds), then you can call the E Series board digital function in a loop with a software timer. That digital line can route to the counter to act as the trigger.
So, on the programming side, you can have three separate and independent operations in parallel. One is for the digital function to output on that line every so often. Another is for the counter set at the retriggerable pulse generation. The last is for the analog input. I will describe this in terms of LabVIEW, but it can be done in a similar fashion with the NI-DAQ function calls or Measurement Studio.
The digital examples are in the LabVIEW >> Examples >> Daq >> Digital >> E-Series directory. The Generate Retriggerable Pulse example is in the LabVIEW >> Examples >> Daq >> Counters >> DAQ-STC directory. The E Series boards use the DAQ-STC timing chip.
Go to the LabVIEW >> Examples >> Daq >> anlogin >> strmdisk.llb directory and start with the Cont Acq to Spreadsheet File. This shows how to continuously acquire data and stream it to disk while displaying the data on a chart. Streaming to disk is the efficient way to save data while you are acquiring, as it eliminates the overhead of always opening and closing the file through the iterations of the loop. This saves to a file that can be opened by other applications (Excel, Word, etc.), but it is not as fast as writing to a binary file, which must be opened and read back through LabVIEW. However, for your ~250 Hz rate, it should be fine. Then, go to the LabVIEW >> Examples >> Daq >> anlogin >> anlogin.llb and look at the Acquire N Scans -ExtScanClk example. This shows how to apply the scan clock. Here, the AI Start that you saw in the previous example is replaced by 4 VIs (3 AI Clock Config's and the AI Control). Make those changes to the first example and then add a constant 0 to the AI Control parameter for total scans to acquire. That specifies the continuous operation. The File >> VI Properties >> Documentation menu item of the example describes the physical connections.
If you aren't using LabVIEW, use the NI-DAQ User Manual and the NI-DAQ Help file installed on your machine. You can look at your AT E Series User Manual at the http://www.ni.com/manuals pages for more information on the hardware. Also, if you want to route those signals internally on the board, you can find some entries in the KnowledgeBase at the http://www.ni.com/support pages.
Regards,
Geneva L.
Applications Engineering
National Instruments
http://www.ni.com/ask