© National Instruments Corporation G-1 NI-DNET User Manual
Glossary
Symbol Prefix Value
m milli 10–3
k kilo 103

A

A amperes
AC alternating current
actuator A device that uses electrical, mechanical, or other signals to change
thevalue of an external, real-world variable. In the context of device
networks, actuators are devices that receive their primary data value from
over the network; examples include valves and motor starters. Also known
as final control element.
ANSI American National Standards Institute
Application
Programming Interface
(API)
A collection of functions used by a user application to access hardware.
Within NI-DNET, you use API functions to make calls into the NI-DNET
driver.
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Exchange
Assembly Object Objects in DeviceNet devices which route I/O message contents to/from
individual attributes in the device.
attribute The externally visible qualities of an object; for example, an instance
square of class Geometric Shapes could have the attributes length of sides
and color, with the values 4in. and blue.
automatic polling A polled I/O mode in which NI-DNET automatically determines an
appropriate scanned polling rate for your DeviceNet system.