Commands and data exchanged between the NI driver and Matlab data acquisition toolbox.

Hi, I used Bronkhorst’s own openDDE to control part of the mass flow meters/controllers in my experimental setup, while one other was operated from a LabView interface. My supervisor now wants me to stick with Matlab alone and work with the Matlab data acquisition toolbox and drivers of the respective devices under usage (predominantly NI- NI 9263, NI 9211, NI 9217,NI 9401,...). I'm a student and I'm still new to Matlab. I don't own any version of Matlab yet, but I will get one soon. Can you please enlighten me about the commands and data exchanged between the NI driver and Matlab data acquisition toolbox. Is there a documentation/tutorial available that you could direct me to? Looking forward to your inputs :) thanks a lot.

Regards, Ram.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

The toolbox and the driver do not exchange commands as such. The toolbox calls the driver; the driver is effectively a library. You seldom need to understand how it works unless you are building a custom driver.

It is important to decide whether you are using the "legacy interface" or if you are using the "session based interface" which is usable with newer NI devices. For an example of the use of the session based interface, see http://www.mathworks.com/help/daq/examples/generate-signals-on-ni-devices-that-output-voltage.html