<br>Hello Staurt, I found the following on the Net:
http://www.engineeringtalk.com/news/flb/flb104.html So you could use the "Brooks Smart DDE software" with LabVIEW. The DDE VIs in LabVIEW are not on the palette anymor. You can get to them by going to vi.lib\Platform\dde.llb. You may want to first take a look at the DDE example VIs at: examples >> comm >> ddeexamp.llb. I am guessing the "Brooks Smart DDE software" will take care of talking to the controllers via the 485 port and all you would need to do is get the data from it using DDE. Not sure why they're (still) using DDE.. it's not very reliable and a dying technology. You may want to ask the vendor if they have an OPC Server. That would be a better solution. Also, the article says the controllers now support the Profibus protocol. This is another option. You would have to use a Profibus interface card in your PC and it should support OPC. NI sells (used to sell?) one such Profibus card: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/5913E03F551DE3F786256A32005B4586?opendocument You can then use either DataSocket or the Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module for LabVIEW as the OPC Client. Finally, if you know the protocol for the controller, you can write your own driver-VIs. This would be some work on your part. A starting point would be the Serial examples at: examples >> instr >> smplserl.llb. Hope this gives you a few options to consider. Regards, <i>Khalid</i> <br>
