MiniLab 1008 USB data acqusition and control hardware

[James Meyer]

I bought one because it was inexpensive and *supposedly* easy to program
applications for. Well, I feel like I would have felt if I had ordered an
automobile and they delivered a ton or two of iron ore instead and expected me
to refine it into steel in order to build a vehicle.

All I really want or need is a tiny application that enables
communication through the USB port to the MiniLab and a list of the internal
MiniLab registers that accept commands, and return data.

Labview is a system born in hell that only an Apple icon freak could
love.

I refuse to load megabytes of MS .net framework garbage in order to
produce a simple stand-alone application for my own use.

Have I thrown away a hundred bucks or so on a piece of hardware that is
damn near useless for my purposes?

Jim "Frustrated in Durham" Meyer

 

[Rich Grise]

I bought one because it was inexpensive and *supposedly* easy to program
applications for. Well, I feel like I would have felt if I had ordered an
automobile and they delivered a ton or two of iron ore instead and
expected me to refine it into steel in order to build a vehicle.

All I really want or need is a tiny application that enables
communication through the USB port to the MiniLab and a list of the
internal MiniLab registers that accept commands, and return data.

Labview is a system born in hell that only an Apple icon freak could
love.

I refuse to load megabytes of MS .net framework garbage in order to
produce a simple stand-alone application for my own use.

Have I thrown away a hundred bucks or so on a piece of hardware that is
damn near useless for my purposes?

You say USB. Can you open it as if it were a drive? That's how my Fuji
camera works.

Good Luck!
Rich

 

[James Meyer]

You say USB. Can you open it as if it were a drive? That's how my Fuji
camera works.

Good Luck!
Rich

I haven't tried that. My guess is that it is essentially a
microprocessor with a USB interface and A/D D/A capabilities. If worse comes to
worse, I'll open it up and reverse engineer the blooming thing.

I really miss the good old days when things like an IBM PC came with
complete schematics and an assembly listing for the BIOS.

Jim

 

[Rather Play Pinball]

Have I thrown away a hundred bucks or so on a piece of hardware that is

damn near useless for my purposes?

Yes.

 

[Walter Harley]

[...]
All I really want or need is a tiny application that enables
communication through the USB port to the MiniLab and a list of the
internal
MiniLab registers that accept commands, and return data. [...]

If it's anything like my LabJack, then it came with (or has available) DLLs
that interface to its drivers. So, you can call the DLL functions using
whatever programming language you prefer - C, Perl, 80x86 assembly... It
looks like this is part of their "Universal Library", which should have come
with the product.

 

[James Meyer]

[...]
All I really want or need is a tiny application that enables
communication through the USB port to the MiniLab and a list of the
internal
MiniLab registers that accept commands, and return data. [...]

If it's anything like my LabJack, then it came with (or has available) DLLs
that interface to its drivers. So, you can call the DLL functions using
whatever programming language you prefer - C, Perl, 80x86 assembly... It
looks like this is part of their "Universal Library", which should have come
with the product.

The "universal library" did come with the MiniLab. I could spend a
while finding out which DLL did what, but I'd much rather have enough
information about the guts of the device to be able to "bit bang" it.

DLLs and canned routines are nice as long as they do what you want done.
And if they don't force you to do a lot of things you'd rather not do. If they
work, it's OK. If they don't work, you don't have much of a chance to
troubleshoot them. All you can do is to wait for the next "service pack".

I haven't done it yet, but I suspect that a simple "hello world"
application would need megabytes of DLLs, resident runtime libraries, and that
I'd have to install almost everything that came with the MiniLab on every
computer that I wanted to connect to it.

Jim "No black boxes!" Meyer

 

[Walter Harley]

The "universal library" did come with the MiniLab. I could spend a
while finding out which DLL did what, but I'd much rather have enough
information about the guts of the device to be able to "bit bang" it.

DLLs and canned routines are nice as long as they do what you want done.
And if they don't force you to do a lot of things you'd rather not do. If
they
work, it's OK. If they don't work, you don't have much of a chance to
troubleshoot them. All you can do is to wait for the next "service pack".

I haven't done it yet, but I suspect that a simple "hello world"
application would need megabytes of DLLs, resident runtime libraries, and
that
I'd have to install almost everything that came with the MiniLab on every
computer that I wanted to connect to it.

Well, IME usually the DLLs have some fairly low level entry points.

The issue is that from a Win32 platform, you're not really allowed to
directly bit-bang much of anything: software is not supposed to have direct
access to hardware. You have to go through a driver of some sort. That's
one of the ways that Win32 tries to keep applications from causing
bluescreens: basically, only drivers are allowed to crash the system, at
least in principle. Jim, I don't know what level of programmer you are, so
forgive me if I'm being pedantic, but writing ring-0 device drivers for
Win32 is a fairly arcane skill.

So although I don't know the MiniLab situation in particular, I suspect you
may be overestimating the weight of the baggage. Give it a look, before you
reject it altogether. It may well be that the simplest, least-baggage,
lowest-level reasonable approach is to write to the DLL functions and let
them worry about talking to the hardware.

But anyway - these guys claim to have unlimited free technical support. Are
they not answering the phones?

 

[docboggle]

Sample VI's to help get you started...

I had similar issues getting up to speed with the LabVIEW and miniLAB 1008 interface. Called Measurement Computing tech support, and they pointed me to a small library of applications developed specifically for this unit.

://ftp.mccdaq.com/downloads/example_programs/Product_Specific_Examples/MiniLAB_1008/UL-LabVIEW/[/url]

*** NOTE THE FORUM WON'T LET ME POST LINKS, SO ADD ftp RIGHT BEFORE THE FIRST COLON TO GET TO THE APPROPRIATE DOWNLOAD SITE!!!***

You are exactly right, though, if all you have to start with is LabVIEW, the miniLAB 2008, and associated software and docs, unless you've got considerable tech cred, its nigh impossible to suss out!

Good luck!