Using the HYTEK iUSBDAQ on a MAC

[j_man51]

Hi, sorry If this question is a inherently obvious,

but i'm new to this sort of thing and I desperately

need help.

I'm a high school student doing an extended essay on rocketry,

and I am using an iusbdaq from hytek to log voltages from a load

cell. I have it working perfectly with windows, however the laptop

i'm using is a mac. I have downloaded the mac driver and whatnot,

and can launch the test application which seems to correctly display

the input voltages. However, beyond this I am clueless. I suspected

that you had to have the Mac version of labview, and then use the

labview interface in conjunction with this driver, but i could be wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

James

[crelf]

QUOTE (j_man51 @ Nov 15 2008, 07:13 PM)

I'm a high school student doing an extended essay on rocketry, and I am using an iusbdaq from hytek to log voltages from a load cell...

Hi James - and welcome to the wonderful world of LabVIEW I've made a career out of playing with similar things using LabVIEW and it's a whole lot of fun!

So, you say that you've got what you want working on a Windows PC - is that a program you wrote using LabVIEW? The software that comes with the iUSBDAQ has some examples (they're are probably what you've got running okay), but they are compiled code that is running under the LabVIEW run time engine. To create your own custom code (I think that's what you're trying to do) then you do need to install and program in LabVIEW. Thankfully, LabVIEW has a 30-day evaluation mode where you can make your own code, and it also has an academic version (if you're doing this through your school, then they might already have academic licenses).

If you can give us some more info on what you're trying to acheive in your essay, you might even find a few professional engineers here that are willing to help you out...

[Irene_he]

QUOTE (crelf @ Nov 15 2008, 10:34 PM)

So, you say that you've got what you want working on a Windows PC - is that a program you wrote using LabVIEW? The software that comes with the iUSBDAQ has some examples (they're are probably what you've got running okay), but they are compiled code that is running under the LabVIEW run time engine.

Hi Christopher,

iUSBDAQ comes with both the compiled ready to run software as well as LabVIEW examples with source code (none compiled ones) that implement all iUSBDAQ features and functionalities.

To James - This is Irene from HYTEK. iUSBDAQ provides a DLL alike file for MAC (*.so file) as well as a simple testing program. If you needs more functionalies in MAC, you may need to run LabVIEW examples in MAC or do your own programming. In order to load up LabVIEW vis in MAC, you just need to link to the .so file for iUSBDAQ when LabVIEW asks you to find it. The same LabVIEW vis, examples for windows can be used for MAC. But if you don't want to do your own programming or run LabVIEW, your best choice is finding some middle ware to make window's application running under a MAC machine. Below is a link that I found:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Thank you,

Irene

[j_man51]

Thank you both!

Christopher,

The essay is on physics and the topic is "what is the effect of the fuel:oxidizer ratio on the specific impulse

of a solid rocket motor". The design I am using involves a load cell to graph a thrust-time graph which

will be used to calculate the impulse (integral of the graph), and from that the specific impulse. I have a

variety of "sugar candy" propellant grains which will be tested.

My knowledge of Labview is limited to my use of Robolab years ago when I used to program lego mindstorms,

so I think I will try out the crossover software that Irene suggested.

Thanks again,

James