Programming ACS Motion Controllers with LabVIEW (Elegant and Easy)

1. Make sure that the ACS ADK Suite is installed on the PC with LabVIEW.  Contact PI, if you need to download.

2. To begin, we will be using an ActiveX Server. ActiveX is based on COM (Component Object Model) technologies that allow you to reuse code and link programs together. LabVIEW, in our case, will act as an Automation Client with a program structure that follows Automation Open->Invoke Methods->Automation Close. You will see this practically in effect in the example outlined below.

3. To use LabVIEW in this way, we must register our ActiveX Server (DLL) provided in the ACS ADK Suite. 

4. Type CMD in the Windows Search box to get a command prompt.  Here you can register the DLL with the command below – please note your path may be different – check your install path and replace path as necessary. Also note: the user in this case should have administrator rights.

regsvr32 “C:\Program Files (x86)\ACS Motion Control\CommonFiles\SPiiPlusCOM660_x86.dll”

12. Once this is connected, we can open a socket and communicate with the controller. At this point we can either communicate with the motion simulator or with a connected controller. We’ll deal with each case separately below:

a. Simulator: The simulator requires the ACS MMI to be open and simulator connected. Once this is done, we can also check the simulator IP address.

i. Checking the IP address is done easily-open the ACS MMI and note the Simulator is there by default.

b. Connected Controller:

i. The default IP address for the controller will be 10.0.0.100.

1. The host PC should have a compatible IP Address, namely 10.0.0.xxx (where xxx≠100).

2. From here, the IP Address of the controller can be used in the “IP Address” string control.

15. In the second frame, we’ll make a quick program to check Firmware Revision and indicate connection status. 

As before, we use an invoke node (Functions-> Application Control->Invoke Node) and wire the reference out on the OpenCommEthernetTCP Method to the reference in on the invoke node. Once this is done, we can select the method.

In this case, we select GetFirmwareRevision. Here, we see two inputs: CallType and pWait. CallType can be wired to an empty constant (right click on the input and select create constant)-do the same for pWait, but set constant value to 0. 

17. You can now wire a string control to the output of the GetFirmwareVersion Method. Here, we can use feedback to verify we are connected and getting proper responses from the Motion Simulator/Controller. To do this, we can wire a string indicator to the output of GetFirmwareVersion.

Then, we can check if there is an empty string being returned by adding “Empty String/Path?” .vi (Functions->Programming->Comparison). We then wire a Boolean Not (to negate the True/False output). In this case, an empty string will indicate True (when we want a non-empty string to indicate True).

We can then add a Boolean Indicator on the front panel (to light up when verify connected with proper feedback from the controller).