Re: Precisely driving several devices from IgorPro through National Instruments board possible?

Posted by Craig Brideau on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Precisely-driving-several-devices-from-IgorPro-through-National-Instruments-board-possible-tp4907273p4908729.html

You will probably want to use the onboard high-speed counters to
handle the laser modulation.  Rather than doing analog control, just
use pulse-width modulation with the counters.  If the overall
repetition rate is very high the subjects should not be able to
perceive the flashing.  If you try to use the digital I/O lines and
trigger them in software you will be at the mercy of the computer's
task-handling capabilities.  Since PCs are not designed to be
real-time devices this could lead to some irregularities in the
software triggering.

Best of luck!

Craig


On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 6:48 AM, Ponti, Aaron <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Dear list
>
> we would like to set up a system for behavioral experiments
> (conditioning) with mice where several pieces of hardware should be
> driven and, most importantly, precisely synchronized (at the few-ms
> scale). We currently are thinking of using WaveMetrics Igor Pro the Igor
> NIDAQ Tools MX to program the experiment protocols and then drive all
> the hardware through a National Instruments NI PCI-6229 board.
> In our setup, we would need to control (1) a laser through analog and
> digital outputs (->aotf and ->ttl) to modulate the laser power and/or to
> switch it on and off; (2) a sound source (digital), (3) a camera
> (digital); and possibly other recordings.
> Does anybody have any experience with using Igor Pro for this kind of
> things? Is it possible to trigger all this hardware precisely? The laser
> pulses will have down to 5ms period, is this time resolution possible at
> all? Is it conceivable to be able to react to measurements, i.e. modify
> the generated output signals on the fly in response to measured inputs?
> Can you otherwise suggest other approaches?
>
> Thanks a lot for any suggestions
>
>  ----------------------------------------------------------
> | Dr. Aaron C. Ponti
> | Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
> | Facility for Advanced Microscopy and Imaging
> | Image processing and analysis / software development
> | Maulbeerstrasse 66 CH-4058, Basel
> | WRO-1066.0.16
> | Tel: [phone]
> | Fax: [phone]
> | http://www.fmi.ch/faim
>  ----------------------------------------------------------
>