NI 4071: nidaqmx or legacy?

[KingTermite]

I was told by a co-worker that our new NI 4071 DMM is  not supported by NiDAQ Traditional (legacy) driver which all of our current code base is using. I have been trying to come up to speed on NiDAQmx to write a new driver for this DMM.

I was struggling just getting the device/channel addressing correct to create a task, and was searching these forums when I stumbled across this post:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=80&message.id=794#M794

telling me Ni 407x DMMs are supported by NiDAQ Traditional (legacy).

Is this true?

If not, and I do need to use NiDAQmx, are there any DMM exmamples for NiDAQmx? I can't find any and it would help tremendously.

[kirsch]

Hello KingTermite

As Mark S. correctly points out in the post you linked to, you need to use the NI-DMM API. You cannot use NI-DAQmx to program the 4071 DMM.

If you have the NI-DMM driver installed, you should be able to easily find programming examples for your device using LabVIEW's Example Finder. Hopefully you find the NI-DMM API easier to use and more straightforward than the legacy NI-DAQ.

Good luck
Marcos

[KingTermite]

Thanks for the reply kirsch.

We would LOVE to use the Ni-Dmm because we already have existing drivers for them (we've used on other boards we have, 4060 and 4070 mostly). However, according to NI Digital Multilmeter Getting Started Guide (like this one: http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/373120k.pdf ) it appears (on page 9 in Configuring and Testing MAX section) to imply that Ni 4071 is only supported by Ni-DAQmx (implied by table of devices vs. folder names).

Our engineer who installed the card said he was unable to get it to come up in MAX under the "Traditional NI-DAQ (Legacy)" section which is what is needed to use the existing drivers (with NiDmm api) as I am told. So if it should work with NiDmm api, how can we get it to come up in MAX correctly?

It seems we are missing something here....just not sure what.

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@kirsch wrote:
Hello KingTermite

As Mark S. correctly points out in the post you linked to, you need to use the NI-DMM API. You cannot use NI-DAQmx to program the 4071 DMM.

If you have the NI-DMM driver installed, you should be able to easily find programming examples for your device using LabVIEW's Example Finder. Hopefully you find the NI-DMM API easier to use and more straightforward than the legacy NI-DAQ.

Good luck
Marcos

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[sead_suskic]

You can still use NI-DMM to control your PXI-4071 even if it appears under DAQmx devices. NI-DMM help on niDMM Initialize function describes the Instrument Descriptor parameter, and specifically it mentions that you can use an NI-DAQmx name. The fact that a PXI-4071 appears under NI-DAQmx devices is expected; stated differently, a PXI-4071 will not appear under Traditional NI-DAQ devices (and that's a good thing )

I definitely see how one can get confused aobut the way MAX presents a PXI-4071 device and the actual API that one would use to program the DMM. To keep the lengthy explanation short, MAX and NI drivers use very important NI infrastructure components to configure and program the devices. One of these infrastructure components can be abstracted as "NI-DAQmx devices". NI-DMM devices appear as NI-DAQmx devices (and Traditional NI-DAQ for older models) in MAX, but one always uses NI-DMM to program them.

I hope that clears up the things a liitle bit.

[kirsch]

King Termite -
I can see how you got confused. It's true that the 4071 uses DAQmx infrastructure for the low-level driver but that may not be very relevant to the end user - who needs to program it using NI-DMM.
I will forward your feedback to the relevant groups, perhaps this can be made clearer in future versions of our software (Signal Generators, Digitizers and other Modular Instruments would have the same issue).

Marcos

[KingTermite]

Thanks for responses all. I'll try to get it working with our existing handler using NiDAQmx name in MAX.

As for making it clearer.....that would be a good idea. I found the documentation a bit cumbersome, especially for programming with Ni-DAQmx.

[KingTermite]

Thanks for responses all. I'll try to get it working with our existing handler using NiDAQmx name in MAX.

As for making it clearer.....that would be a good idea. I found the documentation a bit cumbersome, especially for programming with Ni-DAQmx.

[KingTermite]

I just wanted to follow up and say thanks all. You were right and I was able to use our existing niDmm drivers with the NIDAQmx name for addressing. It looks like its all working well now.