contol an electric actuator

[mezga]

Hi all!

I am novice in Labview(2 months experience) and in Electronics (0month ). I won a student grant in Belgium. My task here is to develop a program in labview 8.01 to control a pump and a valve. The pump is connected to the computer through serial port (I did a program for the pump).

Now I am suffering with the valve. This is a 2 position electric actuator which can be remote control. I attached a picture and some instruction how to connect the actuator.

For me (correct me if it is not true) it seems that I can remote control the valve with a digital I/O module.

I have a NI cDAQ-9172 rack with NI 9401 8 channel TTL Digital I/O Module. Because I haven

[crelf]

I set a digital line output and a digital port output (I don

[mezga]

A digital line is only one control line that you can send a 1 or a 0 to - it's a one bit Boolean. A port is 8 digital lines virtually connected together so you can send an array of Booleans to it, or even an 8bit (go figure) number to control / read from it.

From the documentation you've posted, it looks like maybe the red and black wire need to be shorted to activate the value and disconnected to deactivate it. Before you try that, power it up and put a volt meter across the red and black wires (probably a good idea to use an ammeter too) to make sure that I'm right...

hi crelf!

I tried what you suggested and the valve do the same than my connection (I think because it does not matter you short the red and black wires or connected them on a different didgital output pin... they will get the same signal)

So the motor in the valve can move (moving continuously) but can not stop after one movement.I have to completly switch off the NI cDAQ 9172 to stop the motor. Normally if I use the manual control and push the button the motor move from one stop to another stop(it takes about 1 sec)

So how can I set a time till the valve get signal?

I connected the green wire (ground) to the COM1 pin... Is this right? where should I connect my ground?