158 Chapter 3
Easy Ways to Control Instruments
Using PC Plug-in Boards
Data Translation’s Visual Programming Interface (VPI)
Data Translation’s VPI works with VEE to create seamless data acquisition
performance for PC plug-ins. By leveraging the flexibility of Data
Translation’s Open Layers standards, you have access to over 50 data
acquisition boards.
The VPI works directly with plug-in ISA, PCI, and USB-based data
acquisition cards that require low channel count. The VPI adds a menu
selection and specific PC plug-in data acquisition icons to VEE. These drive
the Data Translation hardware functionality.
Amplicon
Amplicon has a wide range of analog and digital I/O PC plug-in boards
within the 200 Series, all with VEE support.
The software interface is part of Amplicon’s AmpDIO driver package, a 32-
bit API with a multithreaded DLL for Windows and support for interrupt
driven acquisition. The API contains over 100 calls for efficient and flexible
programming as a Compiled Function using a VEE-specific definition file
and the facility to utilize up to eight boards in one program.
In addition to Amplicon’s own range of plug-in boards, which includes serial
communication devices, Amplicon can supply boards from a wide range of
other manufacturers for data acquisition, serial communication, and GPIB
applications.
Figure 3-25 shows the VEE runtime software (provided free with Amplicon
analog output boards PCI224 and PCI234 and analog input boards PCI230
and PCI260) providing concurrent input and output signals on a PC.
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