LabView Program Explanation
During the summer of 2012, Ben Willis wrote a LabView program that would communicate with a NetBooter and ultimately control a heater and water pump. LabView also plots the temperature of water being heated, and plots the changing temperatures on a graph on the front panel. Before Ben left, he wrote a final report of his work on the program and in the lab in general. I have added a little to Ben's work, mostly housekeeping; deleting some non functioning commands, adding the equation to represent temperature based on voltage, adding an equation for a thermocouple, and connecting with the DAQ. I also plan to make a differential op-amp to allow the DAQ to read the inputs given by the thermocouple. In this way, we will be able to use a thermistor and two thermocouples to control the water temperature in both the straightening pipe and the bending tank.
I had found a lab manual from the University of Minnesota that gave step by step instructions for taking and recording temperature measurements using a thermistor, a DAQ, and LabView. After making the circuit and updating the LabView program it seems to be working within expected error.
The front panel of the LabView program.
Part 1 of the block diagram: The majority of this part of the program is to read the output given by the DAQ, translate it to a temperature, and plot the results.
Part 2 of the block diagram: The main purpose of this part of the program is to determine if the temperature read from part 1 is what was specified in the front panel, and to turn the water pump and heater on or off as appropriate.
A view of the LabView front panel that Ben and I created. The voltage and temperature are actual readings/calculations that have been made.
A view of the lab that inspired the thermistor idea. The numbers are a close comparison of the measured data in the previous picture.
