Speed

[garydxn]

Hi,

I'm very new to this and don't have the first idea about computer programming! therefore most of what I read on this forum would appear to be written in Martian.

I have a Labjack U3 and wish to use it to get data from a printing press.

Speed and amount of metres printed being the most important.

I have a 100 ppr encoder and no idea how to even start to get it to talk to DaqFactory.

I can get an ever increasing count of the pulses and that's about it!

I keep seeing refrences to counters and timers but no difinitive answer on which to use.

Then there is the problem of coverting the data to speed and time, how the hell does that happen?

Would it be possible for someone to point me in the right direction without too much Martian please?

A section for people with no computer programming skills wouldn't go amiss in your forum either or indeed in the user guides.

Many thanks in advance.

Gary

[AzeoTech]

Unfortunately to use the more advanced functions of the LabJack you have to do a very little bit of programming.  The good part is that there is documentation and even samples that you can simply modify to your needs.  For this, go to the DAQFactory - LabJack application guide and corresponding samples.  If you have a quadrature encoder (presumably) then you'll want to use the Quadrature feature of timers.  If you are only moving in one direction then really you could just use the Counter and count pulses.  This would work even if you had a quad encoder.  You would just pick one of the two output wires, then use the Counter example.

 

Converting to speed and time is just math.  You'll need to know what a pulse corresponds to and then you can calculate out the distance.  Use a Conversion to convert the raw channel data into actual engineering units.

 

As for a section in the forum or user guides, the problem is that every application is different.  I can give you a calculation for converting pulses to distance, but the next person will have a slightly different setup and that technique won't work.  It is much better to take the time and actually understand the concepts.  In addition to giving you more in your "toolkit", it will ensure that you are doing the things you think you are doing and reading the values you think you are reading. 

 

So, people just post questions in the appropriate areas of the forum.  There are many user's of DAQFactory like yourself that are not programmers and make excellent progress using DAQFactory for their application.  They have posted questions here as needed and referred to the user's guide and other manuals as well.