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Help and Infos for NI "DaqCard-6036E"

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RoGeorge:
Why don't you install either DAQmx or an older LabVIEW?
Both are free to download and use for non-commercial.

Alternatively, install only NI-VISA (also free to download and install even for commercial use).  IIRC, NI-VISA will also install any hardware drivers, too, and from there take the user manual and use it as a VISA instrument with any other software, like Octave (or Matlab), or PyVISA, etc.

switchabl:
The (free) DAQmx driver package should come with NI MAX which allows you to control the inputs and outputs "by hand". But the main selling point of these devices is really that you can control them from your own software. Labview is one way to do that but APIs for other languages are available as well (like C, .NET, Python, Matlab), most of which are free.


--- Quote from: RoGeorge on August 02, 2023, 04:31:53 pm ---Alternatively, install only NI-VISA (also free to download and install even for commercial use).  IIRC, NI-VISA will also install any hardware drivers, too, and from there take the user manual and use it as a VISA instrument with any other software, like Octave (or Matlab), or PyVISA, etc.

--- End quote ---

NI-VISA is for instrument control, the equivalent for DAQs is NI-DAQmx. There are official Python bindings now (https://github.com/ni/nidaqmx-python).

EDIT: There is actually open-source support on Linux through Comedi (https://www.comedi.org/hardware.html) but that is maybe not the most user-friendly way to go.

alm:

--- Quote from: Joshi-1337 on August 02, 2023, 02:42:23 pm ---Sounds like a "oh no" to me...

is there really no opensource software to control the outputs and the inputs ?

--- End quote ---
A DAQ is typically used when you need to acquire or control a variety of parameters. So from what I've seen they are generally integrated in some piece of custom software. Like I remember reading about forum user joeqsmith using a basic DAQ to simulate part of a motor cycle. That's not something you're going to find any off the shelf software for. So generally DAQ manufacturers give you drivers and libraries to control the DAQs from your own program, like LabVIEW, MATLAB, Python, etc. Keysight's BenchVue supports their DAQ, but that won't help you and is probably quite expensive.

There is sigrok, but it doesn't appear to support any DAQs according to their website.

I would recommend to look into software support before buying something if it is something that heavily relies on software. So not so much for a bench power supply, but definitely for a DAQ or any kind of hardware that relies on computer control and lacks its own front panel.

zrq:
If you are OK with it, LabVIEW is trivial to pirate, just search around and you may find a small exe that activates LabVIEW editions from ancient to 2023. Or you can either try to hack with the daqmx python binding or using the C++ API, although your mileage may vary, depends on your skill.

There is one thing for sure, you will have to do some programming, it may be just dragging a few boxes together in LabVIEW or writing tens of lines of straightforward code in Python. It may be a challenge for people used to work with ready made front pannels, but this also gives one the maximum flexibility if one enjoys that. I used my USB-6259 as a dynamic signal analyser, low frequency frequency response/impedance analyser, peak counter/MCA when playing with radioactivity detectors,calibrator for some old meters and a voltage source for driving the gate when doing IV mapping with a Keithley 238, all with low effort python scripting.

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