Pump driver quandary

Hi, I need some help with setting the flow rate of a dual syringe pump. I have a 3rd party cd driver that links Labview with the pump. The cd has a stack of vi's on it and I'm not sure which one suits my application. I'm looking to inject carbon dioxide into a polymer extruder, and set and vary these amounts. From a long list of VI's I've narrowed it down to the vi posted below. If someone is familiar with this, I hope they would'nt mind having a look at it. I'm pretty new to labview and cant make head nor tale of this VI.
Thanks
D
Attachments:
Panel.vi ‏678 KB

Hi Seamus,
No, the issue has not been resolved I'm afraid. I just thought it was unfair heaping this VI on someone else to explain to me, especially when I'm not even sure if it is the correct VI for my purposes. For starters, I'm using a dual syringe pump, and the vi I posted is for a multi-pump. I basically need to interface my PC with the syringe pump so I can control the flow rate through LabView v7.1. I'm using cFP, with several other modules, including an analogue input and output. I think if I can get the flow rate first off I will have achieved something.
I would appreciate any help, thanks,
D

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Hey everyone,
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Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
TB06_LabView_Toolkit.pdf ‏708 KB
TB19_Universal_Driver.pdf ‏221 KB
labivew vi snapshot.PNG ‏14 KB

Hey everyone,
After going through their manual better, I found out the way to properly send a frame. The manual at, www.isco.com/pcfiles/PartPDF/SL000004/UP00194U.pdf , section 7 specifically, covers it.
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If you have your ,
destination ID (pump controller) = 1
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1B checksum (which changes with command of course)
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Dennis, I actually don't have the CD itself, but I assumed it wouldn't have nothing more than an executable since I downloaded their LabVIEW pump driver demo (http://www.isco.com/products/appnotes.asp?PL=105 under software utilities). I am currently trying to locate the CD here at the lab, and I will update this thread if I find anything useful.
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Thank you Dennis for your input in this.
Regards,
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When you configure the serial port, did you enable sending a termination character? When you use HyperTerminal, and you hit "Enter" at the end of a command, that "Enter" gets sent to the PHD pump. LabVIEW normally sends exactly the characters you provide. If you wire a single-line string, it won't include an end-of-line termination character (Carriage Return in this case). You can configure VISA to append a termination character after each transmit, as shown here: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/PHD-2000-Pump-driver-change-infuse-rate/m-p/2637177#M788074

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Two options come to mind:
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I am not sure how you approached this problem but I would first have written a driver where each vi represents a discrete function like set SetPumpSpeed, GetPumpPressure, OpenPumpConnection, ClosePumpConnection (how do you communicate with the pump). The I would provide a "Soft panel" which is just a vi to allow the basic or even full control of the pump. When I want to use the pump in a large scale application I would call the pump driver subvi's directly.
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I would like to change the com1 to com2 in the attached Vi. Do you know how I can do that? Thanks
Attachments:
Copy (A) of manual pump drive single execution_last.vi ‏75 KB

Hello,
I am not sure I understand your question. Do you mean you want to
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Thanks
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National Instruments

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BEGIN
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ORA-39001: invalid argument value
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ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_DATAPUMP", line 2718
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Go to task manager and see who is running the oracle.exe process. Or check the services applet and look at the "Log On As" for your db service. If it's you as well, then I dunno. If it's Local System, then you need to modify the service to Log On As a real account with privs to that drive. After you do that, shutdown the database and restart the service.
Edit:
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I am going to buy a new external hard drive and have some questions first

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~L

Ziatron, you wrote ”All you do is open the enclosure and the hard drive plugs in. (done.)“ What enclosure?
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looking at my two dead laCie ext. hard drives and they don't have ”enclosures.“ Just holes in the back to receive the cables.
A hard drive enclosure is a box or case the actual hard drive goes into. Look at the images in the link above. You can see what is inside.
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Well maybe, the better drives are Firewire.
Should that matter to me?
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Is USB a whole lot slower than Firewire if I am transferring materials?
Firewire is faster and _more reliable._
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My recirculating pump in sub vi simulation link doesnt work in the second iteration .It opens for maybe half a second whereas i gave the time delay for 5 secs..plz help very urgent

Hi,
I have attached my simulation loop.In the model attached i hav eone main pump with constant rpm which drives the 5 smaller pumps and fills the tank at the same time.As soon as the tanks reach their 90% level,the valves of the five pumps close(SP1,SP2,SP3,Sp4,Sp5).After that the recirculating pumps opens for 5 secs of the first tank.As soon as the recirculation finishes,the drain valve(SV1) for tank 1 open and the volume goes to interim storage.This happens for all the remaining tanks.
My simulation works the first time,but when the second time the loop starts,it skips the recirculation pump even though i gave a time delay for 5 secs.Plz help ..I have attached the simulation.
Thanks,
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Attachments:
Spatial Logic_2_Final.vi ‏223 KB

Rami,
I suspect that you have a race condition. The widespread use of local variables frequently leads to race conditions. Your subVI (Spatial Logic Sub_2.vi was not included) so I cannot run the VI. You have no way of knowing whether the subVI or the inner case structure will execute first, because there is no data dependency between them.
I think a shift register or a few and some dataflow thinking would allow you to eliminate the inner case structure, the local variables, and, probably, most of your problems.
Some of the SPi are indicators and some are controls. How are they used?
The last case of the inner loop retursn to Case 1. Would case 0 be better?
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Specifically receiving this error...
An OLE DB record is available. Source: "Microsoft Office Access Database Engine" Hresult: 0x80004005 Description: "External table is not in the expected format.".
Error: 0xC020801C at Data Flow Task to Load Alere Coaching Enrolled, Excel Source [56]: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_CANNOTACQUIRECONNECTIONFROMCONNECTIONMANAGER. The AcquireConnection method call to the connection manager "Excel Connection Manager"
failed with error code 0xC0202009.
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Why does this have to be sooooooo difficult???
Can anyone help me out here in trying to set-up a SSIS Package in a rather constrictive environment to pump a .xlsx File into a SQL Server Table? What in God's name am I doing wrong? Or is all this a misnomer? But if it's working how do I disable the error
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Hi ITBobbyP,
According to your description, when you import data of .xlsx file to SQL Server database, you got the error message.
The error can be caused by the following reasons:
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The ACE(Access Database Engine) is not up to date as Vaibhav mentioned. Please download the latest ACE and install it from the link:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255.
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Holding down the option key when booting my iMac lo longer shows me my bootable external drives, the system just boots up to the main system. Also, holding down command, option,P,R no longer zaps the p-ram. the system just boots up.

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Most drive speeds are shown as the actual interface speed (the speed with which data can be moved from the controller & cache to the interface on the PC). This speed is fast because it is all electronic transfer. However, the actual drive speed is slower because the platters, etc. all have moving parts, and are slower than the interface speed. Also, this "extrenal transfer rate" has almost NOTHING to do with the capabilities of the drive itself. It is simply the FASTEST link in the chain (pure electronic transfer), & therefore what the marketing folks like to use. The drives internal characteristics are what limits its performance.
Disk Platters --(STR)--> Cache --(ETR)--> IDE interface on your PC mobo.
Lets look at the external transfer rates (ETR) compared to the real world sustained throughput (STR) rates:
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- IDE/ATA/33 = 33MBps or 264mbps - In the real world, sustained throughput from these drives is going to run around the 23-26MBps mark.
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- IDE/ATA/100/133 - There is very little throughput advantage to these either. They do come in faster rpms. In fact the difference is so negligible, that at one point IBM called their ATA100 drives "ATA66+"
SO then, what is the point of ATA100 over ATA33 then? Well if the data that you need is *already in the cache* of your drive, then it will move from the cache to your PC mobo at the ETR speed of 100MBps (in the case of ATA100). This situation is such a small percentage of the requests for data made to a disk, that when you average it out, the results are negligible.
All of this being said, at times it can be a waste to put an ATA100 drive into an ATA33 mobo. For one thing, ATA100 drives are more expensive. For another thing, on those rare occassions where the data you want IS in the drives cache, it can't move it to the PC at 100MBps, it can only do 33MBps.
So, what makes a drive faster? The bottleneck is getting data from the platters to the cache. So, a faster rotational speed will get the data there faster. If you have a 5400rpm ata33 drive, lets say it's getting data to the cache at 20MBps. Now get a 7200rpm version of the same drive, and you may get data at an STR of 26MBps. Both drives are ATA33, and both drives are identical sizes. That 7200rpm ata33 drive can easily be faster than a 5400rpm ata100 disk. Of course different drives have different performance specs... Not all 100GB 5400rpm drives are alike, as we will see at the very end of this post!
OK, so a summary at this point:
Interfaces
=======
USB 2.0 = ~26MBps (real world STR)
FW400 = ~35MBps
FW800 = ~80MBps (educated guess)
eSATA = somewhere in the 100MBps I would guess I have not seen any SATA interface benchmarks, though I have seen SATA drive benchmarks
Drive Interfaces
===========
NOTE: with drives there is a range. The higher speeds in the range are generally the 15krpm and the 10krpm drives, at least in my SATA numbers.
ATA33 = 23-26MBps
ATA66 = 23-26MBps
ATA100 & 133 = 23-26MBps
SATA = ~70-90+MBps
So, what drive and what interface to get? USB? FW400? Expresscard-FW800? Expresscard-eSATA? Well, it depends on what you wanna do, really. For streaming video editing, you need 3.6MBps per stream. Remember there will be additional overhead (possibly) on the drive. If you are streaming 2 video streams, each with 2 audio tracks, the drive has got to look that stuff up and stream it from the drive to your application. Hopefully you have a lot of RAM!
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SO (by interface):
If your external hard drive is going to connect via USB (~26MBps) then you want a drive that can take full advantage of that. If you are just transferring data for backups, or copying files back & forth, then any old IDE drive will be just fine. If you are doing video and want to maximize your performance, you want to use as much of that 26MBps bandwidth as possible. Get a 7200rpm IDE drive. A 5400rpm may suffice (again not all 5400rpm drives are equal as I will point out shortly). SO how fast is a 7200rpm drive via USB going to be as compared to a desktop drive? It will be at least on par with any 5400rpm desktop drive, and possibly on par with many 7200rpm desktop drives. See becnhmarks taken from storagereview.com at the end of this post for a limited laptop<->desktop comparison.
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eSATA - well, you have no choice. You HAVE to get a SATA hard drive. SImple!
CAVEATS:
Here's the thing. WIth 2.5" drives, IDE drive can operate off of USB bus power. SATA drives often need an external power source. The USB spec only outputs up to 500 or 600 milliamps of power via USB. This is fine for many SATA drives when it comes to reads & writes. However, many require more power for spinup. The Hitachi low power 5k100 SATA drive requires up to 1 amp (1000 milliamps) of power at spinup. The hitachi rep told me that his drive may work on USB power, but running the drive through it's paces would likely need an external (plug into the wall) power source. This is a low power SATA drive too.
Now, if you are going to plug into the wall ANYWAY, then why not just go ahead and get a 3.5" enclosure? For the same price of a 100GB 2.5" SATA drive, you can get a 300GB 3.5" SATA drive! The 3.5" SATA enclosures are a lot cheaper than the 2.5 ones as well.
IDE drives require less power than SATA and can be powered off of the USB port (2.5" drives only - all desktop drives will require AC power!)
CAVEAT #2:
Do you plan to boot windows off of this drive (using the BootCamp windows install hack that allows you to have a small 5Gig windows partition on your Mac for bootstrapping Windows, and where the rest of the windows files are installed to the external drive)? If this is your goal, then Firewire is NOT an option for you!. Windows will NOT boot off of a firewire drive. It will boot off of a USB drive (with the aforementioned hack), or eSATA (w/o the hack).
==========
CONCLUSION
==========
So, I think the best options boil down to the degree of freedom and mobility that you want. If you want a truly portable drive that is not tethered to a wall outlet, then you MUST use an IDE drive, and not SATA. Given the 26MBps real world STR of IDE, and the similar max STR of USB 2.0, this combo makes the most sense. IF you are using your USB ports for other stuff, you can get a FW400 enclosure, or a USB/FW enclosure. FW/USB combo enclosures run around 50% more in price than USB 2.0 only enclosures (iow, about $10 more). And there is not much use in using FW400 unless you have a 7200rpm IDE drive, AND you can't boot from a FW drive if you wanted that option.
If you don't mind being tethered to a wall, I think the best solution for the money is to get a 3.5" SATA enclosure so you can get a much larger drive for your money. It's your choice whether you want to buy a FW800 or eSATA expresscard (I would pick eSATA - no SATA to FW conversion overhead). If you don't want to spend the $100 or whatever on an expresscard, get an external SATA enclosure that is both SATA to eSATA and SATA to FireWire. Again, booting off of Firewire is not an option (at least not for Windows).
====
P.S.
====
One last point: Not all drives are alike!
Quick and simple point... 2 virtually identical 2.5" 7200rpm drives from different manufacturers can perform very differently.
Take a look at the SR High-end DriveMark2006 scores for the following drives (Higher is better):
Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 (100GB, 2.5", 7200rpm, IDE) = 413
Seagate Momentus 7200.1 (100GB, 2.5", 7200rpm, IDE) = 366
Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (100GB, 2.5", 5400rpm, IDE) = 332
Hitachi Travelstar 5k100 (100GB, 2.5", 5400rpm, IDE) = 326
Western Digital Scorpio WD800VE (80GB, 2.5", 5400rpm, IDE) = 287
What this means is that the Seagate 5400rpm is almost as fast as the Seagate 7200rpm drive, with the Hitachi 5k100 neck & neck! The WD 5400rpm drive, however, is noticably slower.
How does this compare to other drives?
The same test performed on high-end desktop drives (these were the ones that scored the lowest - there were some amazingly fast drives - they are also expensive drives)
Seagate Cheetah 10k.7 Desktop Mode (300GB, 3.5", 10000rpm, Ultra320 SCSI) = 412 (that is SLOWER than the Hitachi travelstar 7k100 IDE drive!!!)
Seagate Cheetah 10k.7 Server Mode (300GB, 3.5", 10000rpm, Ultra320 SCSI) = 410
Hitachi Deskstar 7k400 w/ TCQ (400Gb, 3.5", 7200rpm, SATA) = 392 (Hitachi's own notebook drive beats the SATA in these benchmarks!)
Seagate Savvio 10k.1 Server Mode (74GB, 3.5", Ultra320 SCSI) = 375
Hitachi Ultrastar 10k300 (300GB, 3.5", Ultra320 SCSI) = 369
(look at www.storagereview.com for the bench marks and an explanation of this particular benchmark.)
This means that those IDE notebook drives are pretty fast drives, and can even keep up with some SATA and Ultra320 SCSI desktop/server drives! Unfortunately I could not find STR numbers for the laptop drives on storagereview.com or any other location. If anyone knows of another site, I would love to see the results.
-Brain21
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

So, which FW400 portable drive (brand & model) would
you personally recommend?
Regards,
Neither!
Actually, I am going to be booting Windows from a 5Gig internal (bootcamp) partition and the OS files will reside on the external drive. This limits me to SATA & USB.
I am going to get a USB 2.0 enclosure and get one of those 4 drives mentioned at the end of the article (Hitachi TravelStar 5k100 & 7k100 & the Seagate Momentus 5400 and/or 7200rpm drives). That will be my "mobile" solution.
Then, I'm going to find a SATA enclosure (3.5") that does eSATA and FW. I'll clone my mobile drive onto that (well, at least the windows install). I'll run FW400 until prices for the eSATA cards come down to the $50 range (the cards are already there - well one brand is, but there are no mac drivers for it, just windows... so maybe that cheap one will work for me...)
Don't know what brand & size 3.5 drive I'm gonna get.
As for the enclosures, there is something that I don't know that much about. How much of a difference do the chipsets on these things really make a difference? Oxford is the only chipset that I know by name, but I am going to stay away from those. I saw a recording studio lose thousands of dollars worth of recorded time (that they had to refund) because the oxford chipset on their external HDD died and took the drive with it. When I took it to a data recovery specialist friend of mine and told him what happened his first question was "Oxford chipset?" I'm sure that they are much improved now over 2 years ago, but I don't want to take any chances.
Brain21

Pump driver quandary

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