LabVIEW development environment test chamber controller
An environmental or climate chamber is an enclosure used to simulate specific environmental conditions for a variety of materials, including industrial products, biomass, composites, electronics, and aerospace components, and to evaluate the effects of conditioning on these materials.
An Environmental Test Chamber (ETC) has two important parameters, temperature and humidity, which are controlled using a microprocessor-based controller. The program develops the detailed architecture of the system hardware and DAQ, and identifies limitations.
The existing system consists of an environmental test chamber, a controller, a retransmission module, a 1208FSDAQ card and a notebook computer. The detailed architecture of the existing system is shown in the figure below.
Existing systems have limitations, including retransmission modules. In this system, there is only one-way communication, and data can only be displayed, but control and data storage operations cannot be performed.
To address the limitations of existing methods, a software has been developed that will acquire and store data and control the closed loop of the environmental test chamber from a laptop or PC.
The proposed system consists of an environmental test chamber, controller, OPC server and LabVIEW software. Establish communication between instrument and PC by using OPC server. The software acquires and displays data every second and can store it in text format in a time-serial fashion at real-time rates up to 100 samples/second. The acquired data will be logged to a file.
The manufacturer does not provide LabVIEW examples. According to the relevant instructions of the communication protocol, the program suitable for the project is written. A screenshot of the program is shown below.
The relevant information is explained as follows.
LabVIEW program, as shown in the attachment below.