National Instruments I/O Driver

PC-1200AI Property Page

PC1200AICfg.gif (29086 bytes)

I/O Address
Displays the I/O base address of the National Instruments card.  This is a hardware setting that was selected by the Windows Plug-and Play software.

NI-DAQ Device Number
Displays the device number that was assigned by the NI-DAQ configuration utility. This is a software setting that can be changed by running the NI-DAQ configuration utility.

Mode
Selects one of three possible input modes for all incoming analog signals:

Differential - This mode provides four differential inputs with the positive (+) input of the instrumentation amplifier tied to channels 0, 2, 4, or 6 and the negative (-) input tied to channels 1, 3, 5, or 7, respectively, thus choosing channel pairs (0, 1), (2, 3), (4, 5), or (6, 7).

Ref'd Single-Ended - This mode provides eight single-ended inputs with the negative input of the instrumentation amplifier referenced to analog ground.

Non-Ref'd Single-Ended - This mode provides eight single-ended inputs with the negative input of the instrumentation amplifier tied to AISENSE/AIGND and not connected to ground.  This mode allows the analog inputs to be referenced to an external signal that is not tied to the card's analog ground.

Polarity
Selects the polarity of the incoming analog signal for all inputs - unipolar or bipolar.

Gain
Selects the voltage range of the incoming analog signal for all inputs.

Digital I/O
This card provides 24 bits of bi-directional digital I/O.  The digital lines are arranged in three banks, each containing eight bits.  Each pair of radio buttons in the PC-1200AI configuration page correspond to one of the banks.  The radio button allows the user to select the direction of each bank of I/O.

Test Panels
Launches the NI-DAQ Test Panels program.  This program allows you to test all of the functionality of the card through a graphical user interface.  This program can be used to test the hardware before running V+.  The NI-DAQ software must be installed before this option will work.

NI-DAQ Cfg Utility
Launches the NI-DAQ Configuration Utility program.  This program assigns a device number to each National Instruments card in the system and prepares it for use with V+.   This program only needs to be run whenever a card has been added or removed.   Also keep in mind that any settings like polarity, gain, etc. are local settings to the NI-DAQ utility program and will be overwritten by the V+ settings.  The NI-DAQ software must be installed before this option will work.