Re: Who's using National Instruments Hardware/Labview / Measurement Studio for Home Automation?

[Marc_F_Hult <MFHult@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1 Aug 2006 08:44:19 -0700, msg@xxxxxxxxx wrote in message
<1154447058.975948.149400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>  I have a Sun S-bus NI GPIB
>board desperately seeking a driver; is there any chance you have
>any sparc Solaris NI stuff?

You don't say which Sun OS version or which National Instruments HPIB
board, but you can download NI drivers for eight different NI HPIB boards
for SPARCstations running Solaris 1 and Solaris 2 here:

http://www.ni.com/support/gpib/versions#workstat

But, frankly, with  USB Data Acquisition modules  with 32,000
samples/second, 12-bit analog-to-digital converters, dual 12-bit analog
out, dual 330khz 10-bit PWM, 16 bidirectional digital I/O,  and 16-bit
counter for NI (Labview, Measurement Studio) costing $79 ($49 if you want
100 ;-), running a power-hungry box for HA isn't so attractive (regardless
of the merits of the OS).

http://www.hytekautomation.com/Downloads/iUSBDAQ/U120816_OverView.pdf

The iUSBDAQ-U12086 low-power, credit-card-sized  USB Data Acquisition (DAC)
module has 16X better resolution than the ELK/Ocelot/etc HA controllers
which makes them much better suited ---  at <1/2 the price to boot (for
combined ADC, DAC, DIO, PWM and counter).

They
http://www.hytekautomation.com

also have 1280x1024 30fps cameras for $55 with free standalone and NI
software, NI Drivers for Nikon digital cameras and other neat stuff (like
high-res 3-D digital video). (I have some stuff on order, but haven't
received it yet.)

Student version of Labview 8.0 (the latest version;for 2000/XP) supposedly
will be available in a couple of weeks for about $80
http://www.ni.com/labviewse/select.htm

This $160 combination (Labview 8.0 student + hytekautomation iUSBDAC)
provides a DAC system that is vastly superior to conventional HA
controllers for data acquisition and control, monitoring, analysis, and
archiving.

HTH ... Marc
Marc_F_Hult
www.ECOntrol.org