Hi, Unfortunately, I was unable to locate a driver for your instrument at www.ni.com/idnet or at the Sartorius website. I would like you to submit a request for this driver at: and with the instrument manufacturer. We develop drivers based on demand and popularity so the more requests we have for it, the greater the possibility that we will develop one. If you would like to try developing your own instrument driver (or modify the existing one), we have documentation, model instrument drivers, and driver templates to help at: We also have a syndicate of third party vendors that specialize in National Instruments' products and services. Some of the vendors specialize in driver development. I would suggest contacting one of the Alliance members at: An instrument driver is a collection of functions that implement the commands necessary to perform the instruments operations.
Sartorius OPC driver for xBPI scales. Sartorius OPC driver for xBPI scales. Order Number. £157.00 Standardized interface for integration of Sartorius weighing equipment in higher-level electronic data processing systems. OPCScale sample application written in LabView 7.1; Website with access to weighing data as a sample. Sartorius RS-232 cable pin out. Sartorius balances, sartorius scale, sartorius rs-232 interface pin ut.
In short, someone read the instrument user manual and implemented some of the functionality in a program for the end user. Instrument drivers are not necessary to use your instrument. They are merely time savers to help you develop your project so you do not need to study the manual before writing a program.
There are example VI's in LV on Instrument Connectivity. If you go to the Help menu Examples. I/O, you will see a couple and Examples. Fundamentals for File and String manipulation. I would suggest tweaking them to suit your application.
Also the specific command that your instrument responds to can be found from it's manual. Some useful resources for your application are ni.com NI Developer Zone Development Library Instrument Connectivity, to search examples and knowledge bases Hope this helps! Best Regards, Aaron K. Application Engineer National Instruments Sat, 21 May 2005 01:28:43 GMT Page 1 of 1 2 post.
I would like to use a LabVIEW interface to control an Arduino microcontroller using a Firmata protocol. The desired goal would be uploading an Arduino sketch with the Firmata functionality so that the Arduino could be completely controlled by the host computer using the LabVIEW interface to enter Firmata-commands (to activate relays, run a bipolar stepper motor, read values from an encoder, etc). Does anyone have experience with the Firmata protocol and how to implement it using VISA?
The old Firmata home-page offered one example of a LabVIEW program using the Firmata protocol; however, it is only scanning the Firmata report for the analog pin voltage values. It does show how to convert the corresponding hexadecimal values to the LSB and MSB bits but I am unsure how to use this. I have only progressed by using the 'vvvv' software and seeing how pin values and pin modes are encoded to the Firmata protocol.
Using the 'Standard Firmata' uploaded on the Arduino, I can successfully activate LEDs using digital or analog (PWM) commands through the 'vvvv' interface. When I try to use these same commands but using my LabVIEW interface, I cannot activate the LEDs relying on analog commands for power. If I change my pin modes and commands to be all digital, I can successfully activate all LEDs using my LabVIEW interface and 'standard Firmata' sketch. I am currently trying to communicate to the microcontroller through a USB serial connection using LabVIEW's VISA to write commands. These commands are strings but changed to hex display. As mentioned previously, I can successfully command digital pin values but cannot command pin values by PWM.
As I understand it, the Firmata protocol loosely follows MIDI where command bytes are 8 bits and data bits are 7 bits. I do not know how the LSB and MSB bits are used. Supposedly, there are some commands that can accommodate more bits but I have not successfully applied them. I apologize for how broad my original post was.
I will narrow my question. Would anyone please share their experiences using the Firmata-commands from a software interface that was different from the Arduino IDE? I am trying to upload a sketch to the Arduino microcontroller so that it used the full functionality of the Firmata library (activating analog and digital pins) but relied on the Firmata commands to be transmitted to the Arduino through the USB serial connection. I would appreciate any additional help or direction.
Thank you for reading this, -Zach. Hey GrumpyMike, If you are interested in my 'progress', I have a link to the LabVIEW forum I posted the same scenario. The present state of affairs is that I am trying to decipher what VISA commands to initiate so I can correctly write and read the buffer from this serial connection. This has become quite infuriating because while I am reading VISA user manuals, I can easily communicate these hexadecimal commands to the Arduino using a different, unsupported software interface called Sartorius COM Helper. This leads me to believe that it is mainly a format issue that requires just a slight tweak of the standard parameters that LabVIEW's VISA uses to establish a serial connection.
I have NO idea how Sartorius COM helper has established a serial connection with the Arduino!? What USB driver does Arduino use? And how can I view it or understand how it works? Maybe, if I understood how it works; I could determine what I need to do in LabVIEW. Could you explain further or direct me to some literature about the conversion of two 7bit bytes (MSB and LSB) into a number? Why MSB multiplied by 256? Thank you for the reply and thank you for reading this, -Zach http://forums.ni.com/t5/Instrument-Control-GPIB-Serial/LabVIEW-interface-using-Firmata-protocol-to-control-Arduino/m-p/3193054#M70041.
Hey GrumpyMike, I really appreciate the clarification. I may have fallen prey to the Firmata propaganda but I did like the idea of making the Arduino microcontroller an 'extension of the computer' using a generic protocol via MIDI 'the language of the gods'. If that means making the Arduino a Walking-Dead version of its former-self to accomplish the desired tasks at present, then so be it (he said unable to do that).
As far as LabVIEW, you are right. You use strings through VISA read/write to receive/transmit data from the buffer via the USB-serial connection. However, the VISA read/write is the most basic version of VISA's read/write capabilities. If I decide to continue on this path, my guess would be that I would have to develop my own driver in VISA so that the two intermediates (Arduino's USB driver and VISA's Firmata-specific driver) can communicate between the software (LabVIEW) and hardware (Arduino)? Please enlighten me.
Am I introducing a hyped-middle man for no reason? Can I accomplish my goal without Firmata? Do I have to write two programs (one for LabVIEW and one for Arduino)? Thank you for the help and for reading this, my LabVIEW-post is almost dead. Is this traffic (number of views) normal? I am slowly dying from seeing the view-count and few replies.