National Instruments NI 5911 Acquiring Data with Your NI 5911

Chapter1 TakingMeasurements with the NI 5911

©NationalInstruments Corporation 1-3 NI5911 User Manual

Note The +5 V signal is fused at 1.1 A. However,National Instruments recommends

limiting the current from this pin to 30 mA. The fuse is self-resetting.

Acquiring Data with Your NI 5911

You can acquire data either programmatically—by writing an application

foryourNI5911—orinteractively with the Virt ualBench-Scope soft front

panel.

To help you get started programming your NI 5911, NI-SCOPE comes

with examples that you can use or modify. You can find LabVIEW

examples by going to Program Files\National Instruments\

LabVIEW\Examples\Instr\niScopeExamples.llb.Examples for

CVI,C, an d Visual Basic programmers using Windows 98/95 are located

in vxipnp\win95\Niscope\Examples,and examples for CVI, C, and

Visual Basic programmers using Windows 2000/NT are available at

vxipnp\winnt\Niscope\Examples.

Other resources include the NI-SCOPE Instrument Driver Quick Reference

Guide. It contains abbreviated information on the most commonly used

functions and LabVIEW VIs. For more detailed function reference help,

see the NI-SCOPE Function Reference Help file, located at Start»

Programs»National Instruments SCOPE. For more detailed VI help,

use LabVIEWcontext-sensitive help (Help»Show Context Help).

The VirtualBench-Scope soft front panel allows you to interactively

control your NI 5911 as you would a desktop oscilloscope.

Thef ollowing sections explain how to make connections to your NI 5911

and takesimple m easurements using the VirtualBench-Scope soft front

panel,as shown in Figure 1-4. To launch the soft front panel, select

Start»Programs»National Instruments SCOPE»VirtualBench-Scope.

The following sections describe how to perform simple analog input

measurements using the VirtualBench-Scope soft front panel.