Control Instrument Applications with National Instruments Measure™

The spreadsheet is one of the most commonly used software packages among engineering, manufacturing, and management personnel. It is used to archive data, analyze results, chart trends, track specifications, and more. With National Instruments Measure software, you can control and read data from serial and GPIB instruments from Microsoft Excel.

With Measure, a set of Microsoft Excel add-ins, you can acquire data directly into your Excel spreadsheet, configure measurement tasks using intuitive dialog windows, perform analog input acquisitions and waveform generation, and perform data acquisition and instrument control. Controlling GPIB or serial instruments from Microsoft Excel is easy with Measure. You set up benchtop experiments or laboratory measurement operations using the intuitive popup dialogs. Whether you are automating quality control and inspection requirements or building simple rack-and-stack test fixtures, you can easily generate signals and take measurements using Measure and then archive the data in Excel for further analysis.

Using the Instrument Setup dialog, you also can easily define the communication parameters for each of your instruments. For GPIB instruments, you enter a name and primary GPIB address from the list of instruments that Measure automatically detects on the GPIB bus. For serial instruments, select a name along with the COM port, baud rate, parity, stop, and data bit specification for communicating with your instrument.

Define Your Own Measurement Tasks
For each instrument, you can define your own measurement and control tasks from the Task Dialog Menu. Enter the command strings for your instrument to acquire data or generate a signal. Then specify an Excel range in which to place the results. You can even develop parsing rules for each task so you keep only the important information. Once you have verified your task operation with the Task Run button, you are free to use these tasks in more complex macros built in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

To simplify measurement and automation operations from Excel, you can customize the Excel menus from the main task dialog to include any of the tasks that you create with Measure. Simply add the instrument control tasks to the GPIB, data acquisition (DAQ), or serial menu in Excel for quick and easy access.

Simplified DAQ Operations from Excel
With Measure, you can easily acquire or generate analog signals directly from Microsoft Excel using a variety of National Instruments DAQ products. For temperature measurements, you can choose from a selection of thermocouple linearization formulas for accurate conversion to voltage readings. For large applications, you can take advantage of the multiplexing power of SCXI™ for high-channel counts, isolation, or amplification.

Measure automatically locates any National Instruments DAQ products configured in your computer. Simply select a device and specify the parameters for analog I/O operations using the Task Configuration dialogs. From the analog input configuration dialog, enter input channels, the number of points to acquire from each channel, the acquisition rate, and a cell range in which to place the data. You also can configure more advanced analog input features for your tasks, such as using external triggering and timing lines. Analog output tasks are defined in a similar fashion. You specify an Excel range of values as voltage, waveform, or level, from a specified analog output channel at a specified rate.

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