Dr.

Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology,

Pollachi.
(An Autonomous Institution affiliated to Anna University)
Question Paper Code : ES16569 Regulation : 2011
B.E./B.Tech. DEGREE EXAMINATION, MAY / JUNE 2017
Sixth Semester - Common to Electronics and Communication
Engineering / Electrical and Electronics Engineering / Instrumentation and
Control Engineering
11EC930 / 11EE931 / 11IC604 - Virtual Instrumentation

Answer key
PART – A (15 x 1 = 15 marks)

1. a) repeat the function of any instrument

2. b) runs in all operating system
3. b) Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench
4. a) Ctrl-E
5. d) Structure
6. a) Binary
7. a) Virtual Instrumentation Software Architecture
8. b) Parallel
9. b) Windows XP (64-bit)
10. a) 2
11. application development software is the most important component of a virtual
instrument.
12. In LabVIEW graphical code is translated into executable machine code by interpreting
the syntax and by compilation
13. Scan from string is used to extract a floating point number from an input string.
14. Auto indexing
15. GPIB commands

PART – B (5 x 2 = 10 marks)

16. List the basic elements of virtual instrumentation

 Application software
 Driver software

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 17. Create a VI for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit.

18. Cluster can be converted to the array. Judge the statement

It can be converted to array if all the elements of the clusters are belongs to same data
type.
19. Identify the major components of a PC-based data acquisition system.
• Sensors
• Driver software
• DAQ hardware
• Application software

20. Define Instrument Driver.

LabVIEW provides more than 1200 LabVIEW instrument drivers from more than 50
vendors. You can use these instrument drivers to build complete systems quickly. Instrument
drivers drastically reduce software development costs because developers do not need to
spend time programming their instruments.

PART – C (1 x 10 = 10 marks)

21. (i) Outline the concepts of the intensity chart operation. (5)

(ii) Summarize the functions and uses of format strings. (5)

i) Use the intensity graph and chart to display 3D data on a 2D plot by placing blocks of color on
a Cartesian plane. For example, you can use an intensity graph or chart to display patterned data,
such as temperature patterns and terrain, where the magnitude represents altitude. The intensity
graph and chart accept a 3D array of numbers. Each number in the array represents a specific
color. The indexes of the elements in the 2D array set the plot locations for the colors.

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Intensity Graphs

The intensity graph works the same as the intensity chart, except it does not retain
previous data values and does not include update modes. Each time new data values pass to an
intensity graph, the new data values replace old data values. Like other graphs, the intensity
graph can have cursors. Each cursor displays the x, y and z values for a specified point on the
graph.

ii)

A string is a sequence of displayable or non-displayable ASCII characters. Strings provide a

platform-independent format for information and data.

CREATING STRING CONTROLS AND INDICATORS

The string control and indicator is located on the Controls»Text Controls and Controls»Text
Indicators palettes to simulate text entry boxes and labels. Right-click a string control or
indicator on the front panel to select from the display types.

Normal displays printable characters using font of the control.

‘\’ Codes Displays backslash codes for all non-displayable characters.

Password Displays an asterisk (*) for each character.

Hex Display Displays the ASCII value of each character in hex instead of the character itself.

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● String Length—Returns in length the number of characters (bytes) string, including space
characters. For example, the String Length function returns a length of 19 for the following
string:The quick brown fox.

● Concatenate String—Concatenates input strings and 1D arrays of strings into a single output
string. For array inputs, this function concatenates each element of the array. Add inputs to the
function by right-clicking an input and selecting Add Input from the shortcut menu or by resizing

the function

 Match Pattern—Searches for regular expression in string beginning at offset, and if it

finds a match, splits string into three substrings. If no match is found, match substring is
empty and offset past match is –1. For example, use a regular expression of + and use the
following string as the input: VOLTS DC+1.22863E+1. The Match Pattern function
returns a before substring of VOLTS DC, a match substring of +, an after substring of
1.22863E+1, and an offset past match of 9. A regular expression requires a specific
combination of characters for pattern matching.
 Array To Spreadsheet String—Converts an array of any dimension to a table in string
form, containing tabs separating column elements, a platform-dependent EOL character
separating rows, and, for arrays of three or more dimensions, headers separating pages.
 Build Text—Creates an output string from a combination of text and parameterized
inputs. If the input is not a string, this Express VI converts the input into a string based on
the configuration of the Express VI.

PART – D (4 x 10 = 40 marks)

22.(a) Draw and explain the basic difference between the traditional instruments and software
based virtual instruments.

traditional instruments virtual instruments

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A traditional instrument is designed to collect A virtual instrument (VI) is defined as an

data from an environment, or from a unit under industry-standard computer equipped with user

test, and to display information to a user based friendly application software, cost-effective

on the collected data. hardware and driver software that together

perform the functions of traditional

instruments.

it is flexible. it is not flexible.

Virtual instruments are defined by the user traditional instruments have fixed
vendor-defined functionality.

In a conventional instrument, the set of In a virtual instrument

components that comprise the instrument is are not fixed but rather managed by software.

fixed and permanently associated with each

other.

Less cost High cost

knobs and switches for user interaction uses a personal computer for user interaction

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22.(b) Identify the role of hardware and software in virtual instrumentation and also explain the
layers of virtual instrumentation software.

Role of Hardware in Virtual Instrumentation

Input/Output plays a critical role in virtual instrumentation. To accelerate test, control and
design, I/O hardware must be rapidly adaptable to new concepts and products. Virtual
instrumentation delivers this capability in the form of modularity within scalable hardware
platforms. Virtual instrumentation is software-based; if we can digitize it, we can measure it.
Standard hardware platforms that house the I/O are important to I/O modularity. Laptops and
desktop computers provide an excellent platform where virtual instrumentation can make the
most of existing standards such as the USB, PCI, Ethernet, and PCMCIA buses.

Role of Software in Virtual Instrumentation

Software is the most important component of a virtual instrument. With the right software
tool, engineers and scientists can efficiently create their own applications by designing and
integrating the routines that a particular process requires. You can also create an appropriate user
interface that best suits the purpose of the application and those who will interact with it. You
can define how and when the application acquires data from the device, how it processes,
manipulates and stores the data, and how the results are presented to the user. With powerful
software, we can build intelligence and decision-making capabilities into the instrument so that it
adapts when measured signals change inadvertently or when more or less processing power is
required. An important advantage that software provides is modularity. When dealing with a
large project, engineers and scientists generally approach the task by breaking it down into
functional solvable units. These subtasks are more manageable and easier to test, given the
reduced dependencies that might cause unexpected behaviour. We can design a virtual
instrument to solve each of these subtasks, and then join them into a complete system to solve
the larger task. The ease with which we can accomplish this division of tasks depends greatly on
the underlying architecture of the software.

A virtual instrument is not limited or confined to a stand-alone PC. In fact, with recent
developments in networking technologies and the Internet, it is more common for instruments to
use the power of connectivity for the purpose of task sharing. Typical examples include
supercomputers, distributed monitoring and control devices, as well as data or result
visualization from multiple locations. Every virtual instrument is built upon flexible, powerful
software by an innovative engineer or scientist applying domain expertise to customize the
measurement and control application. The result is a user-defined instrument specific to the
application needs. Virtual instrumentation software can be divided into several different layers as
shown

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23.(a) Illustrate the front panel objects and their functions in detail with an example.

The Controls palette shown in Figure is available only on the front panel. The Controls
palette contains the controls and indicators which you can use to create the front panel. The
Controls palette can be accessed from the front panel by selecting View»Controls Palette or by
right-clicking an open space on the front panel window to display the Controls palette. The
Controls palettes contain sub palettes of objects which you can use to create a VI. When you
click a sub palette icon, the entire palette changes to the subpalette you selected. To use an object
on the palettes, click the object and place it on the front panel.

Use the search button on the Controls and Functions palettes to search for controls, VIs,
and functions. In search mode, you can perform text-based searches.

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 Use the Options button on the Controls or Functions palette toolbar to change to another
palette view or format.

Up to Owning palette—Navigates up one level in the palette hierarchy.

Front panel objects also have property dialog boxes that you can use to change the look
or behavior of front panel objects. Right-click the front panels object and select Properties from
the shortcut menu to access the property dialog box for an object.

FRONT PANEL CONTROLS AND INDICATORS

You can build the front panel with controls and indicators, which are the interactive input
and output terminals of the VI, respectively. Controls are knobs, push buttons, dials and other
input devices. Indicators are graphs, LEDs and other displays. Controls simulate instrument input
devices and supply data to the block diagram of the VI. Indicators simulate instrument output
devices and display data the block diagram acquires or generates. examples of control and
indicators

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 23.(b) Enumerate the editing and debugging techniques in LabVIEW programming.

Highlight Execution button: To display an animation of the block diagram execution

when you click the Run button. See the flow of data through the block diagram. Click the button
again to disable execution highlighting.

Retain Wire Values: To save the wire values at each point in the flow of execution so that
when you place a probe on the wire, you can immediately retain the most recent value of the data
that passed through the wire. You must successfully run the VI at least once before you are able
to retain the wire values.

Step Into: To open a node and pause. When you click the Step Into button again, it
executes the first action and pauses at the next action of the subVI or structure. You also can
press <Ctrl> and down arrow keys. Single-stepping through a VI steps through the VI node by
node. Each node blinks to denote when it is ready to execute. By stepping into the node, you are
ready to single-step inside the node.

Step Over: To execute a node and pause at the next node. You also can press <Ctrl> and
right arrow keys. By stepping over the node, you execute the node without single-stepping
through the node.

Step Out: To finish executing the current node and pause. When the VI finishes
executing, the Step Out button becomes dimmed. You also can press <Ctrl> and up arrow keys.
By stepping out of a node, you can complete single-stepping through the node and navigate to
the next node.

Pause button: To pause a running VI.

Probe tool: To create probes on wires on the block diagram. Use the Probe tool to check
intermediate values in a VI that produces questionable or unexpected results.

Breakpoint tool: To set breakpoints on VIs, functions, nodes, wires, and structures to
pause execution at that location.

24.(a) Describe in detail about GPIB. Also Explain how to acquire signals using VISA and
GPIB.

GPIB COMMUNICATION

The ANSI/IEEE Standard 488.1-1987, also known as General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB),
describes a standard interface for communication between instruments and controllers from
various vendors. GPIB, instruments offer test and manufacturing engineers the widest selection
of vendors and instruments for general-purpose to specialized vertical market test applications as

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shown in Figure GPIB instruments are often used as stand-alone benchtop instruments where
measurements are taken by hand. You can automate these measurements by using a PC to
control the GPIB instruments.

IEEE 488.1 contains information about electrical, mechanical and functional

specifications. The ANSI/IEEE Standard 488.2-1992 extends IEEE 488.1 by defining a bus
communication protocol, a common set of data codes and formats, and a generic set of common
device commands. GPIB is a digital, 8-bit parallel communication interface with data transfer
rates of 1 Mbyte/s and higher, using a three-wire handshake. The bus supports one system
controller, usually a computer, and up to 14 additional instruments. The GPIB protocol
categorizes devices as controllers, talkers, or listeners to determine which device has active
control of the bus. Each device has a unique GPIB primary address between 0 and 30. The
controller defines the communication links, responds to devices that request service, sends GPIB
commands, and passes/receives control of the bus. Controllers instruct talkers to talk and to place
data on the GPIB. You can address only one device at a time to talk. The controller addresses the
listener to listen and to read data from the GPIB. You can address several devices to listen.

Data Transfer Termination

Termination informs listeners that all data has been transferred. You can terminate a
GPIB data transfer in the following three ways:

● The GPIB includes an end-or-Identify (EOI) hardware line that can be asserted with the
last data byte. This is the preferred method.

● Place a specific end-of-string (EOS) character at the end of the data string itself. Some
instruments use this method instead of or in addition to the EOI line assertion.

● The listener counts the bytes transferred by handshaking and stops reading when the
listener reaches a byte count limit. This method is often used as a default termination method
because the transfer stops on the logical OR of EOI, EOS (if used) in conjunction with the byte

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count. Thus, you typically set the byte count to equal or exceed the expected number of bytes to
be read.

Data Transfer Rate

To achieve the high data transfer rate that the GPIB was designed for, you must limit the
number of devices on the bus and the physical distance between devices. You can obtain faster
data rates with HS488 devices and controllers. HS488 is an extension to GPIB that most NI
controllers support.

HARDWARE SPECIFICATIONS

The GPIB is a digital, 24-conductor parallel bus. As shown in Figure 10.4, it consists of
eight data lines (DIO 1-8), five bus management lines (EOI, IFC, SRQ, ATN, REN), three
handshake lines (DAV, NRFD, NDAC), and eight ground lines. The GPIB uses an eight-bit
parallel, byte-serial, asynchronous data transfer scheme. This means that whole bytes are
sequentially handshake across the bus at a speed that the slowest participant in the transfer
determines. Because the unit of data on the GPIB is a byte (eight bits), the messages transferred
are frequently encoded as ASCII character strings.

Additional electrical specifications allow data to be transferred across the GPIB at the
maximum rate of 1 MB/sec because the GPIB is a transmission line system. These specifications
are:

● A maximum separation of 4 m between any two devices and an average separation of 2

m over the entire bus.

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 ● A maximum cable length of 20 m.

● A maximum of 15 devices connected to each bus with at least two-thirds

of the devices powered on.

If you exceed any of these limits, you can use additional hardware to extend the bus cable
lengths or expand the number of devices allowed.

Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA) is the lower layer of functions in the
LabVIEW instrument driver VIs that communicates with the driver software. VISA by itself
does not provide instrumentation programming capability. VISA is a high-level API that calls
low-level drivers. VISA can control VXI, GPIB, serial, or computer-based instruments and
makes the appropriate driver calls depending on the type of instrument used. When debugging
VISA problems, remember that an apparent VISA problem could be an installation problem with
one of the drivers that VISA calls.

24.(b) Classify the different types of signal conditioning techniques used for accurate
measurements and explain.

SIGNAL CONDITIONING

Signal conditioning is the process of measuring and manipulating signals to improve

accuracy, isolation, filtering, and so on. Many stand-alone instruments and DAQ devices have
built-in signal conditioning. Signal conditioning also can be applied externally, by designing a
circuit to condition the signal or by using devices specifically made for signal conditioning.
National Instruments has SCXI devices and other devices that are designed for this purpose.
Signal conditioning accessories can be used in a variety of important applications. Signal
conditioning accessories amplify low-level signals and then isolate and filter them for more
accurate measurements.

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 25.(a) Demonstrate the LabVIEW applications in process control applications.

Industrial process control has its roots in the big process industries, sometimes called the
Four P’s: paper, petrochemicals, paint, and pharmaceuticals. These plants are characterized by
having thousands of instruments measuring such variables as pressure, temperature, flow, and
level, plus hundreds of control elements such as valves, pumps, and heaters. They use a great
deal of automatic control, including feedback, sequencing, interlocking, and recipe-driven
schemes. Modern control systems for these plants are, as you might imagine, very complex and
very expensive. Most large process control systems are designed and installed through
cooperative efforts between manufacturers, system integrators, and the customer’s control
engineering staff. These are the Big Guns of process control.

National Instruments offers a set of PID algorithms available in the PID Control Toolkit.
You can use them to build all kinds of control schemes;

Process signals

The signals you will encounter in most process control situations are low-frequency or dc
analog signals and digital on/off signals, both inputs and outputs

Control system architectures

Hopefully, you will be designing your LabVIEW process control application along with
the plant you wish to control. Choices of transducers and actuators, as well as the overall process
topology, drastically affect the possibilities for adequate control. The process control engineer is
responsible for evaluating the chemistry and physics of the plant with an eye toward

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controllability. The best software in the world can’t overcome the actions of improperly specified
valves, can’t correct unusable data from the wrong type of flowmeter, nor can it control wildly
unstable chemical reactions. You and your design team need to be on top of these issues during
all phases of the project.

LabVIEW PLC driver example: HighwayVIEW. Of the PLC driver packages currently
available, HighwayVIEW, from SEG, was the first. It supports Allen-Bradley models PLC-2,
PLC-3, and PLC-5 and accepts all data types for both inputs and outputs. Communications are
handled by a program that is installed in your computer’s operating system (a Control Panel
device on the Macintosh; a DLL under Windows). This communications handler is particularly
robust, offering automatic retries if an error occurs. Figure 18.10 shows a simple example of
HighwayVIEW in action as a simple on/off limit controller application.

25.(b) Illustrate the LabVIEW applications in Biomedical Engineering.

BIOMEDICAL STARTUP KIT

The Biomedical Startup Kit is an add-on palette to LabVIEW designed for those
interested in the fields of life science and biomedical engineering. It offers an easy-to-use API
for programming some of the more common tasks in LabVIEW, as well as functions commonly
used in biomedical science laboratories.

The palette as shown in Figure includes sub VIs for acquiring and logging data,
controlling laboratory instruments, processing biomedical images and signals, and using text-
based programming tools commonly employed in processing biomedical data. Of particular
interest to some users is the Simulate ECG Signal Express VI bundled in the palette as shown in
Figure.

A number of features of the Biomedical Startup Kit palette lend themselves to getting
users of LabVIEW up and running quickly. One novel feature of the palette is the Shell VI,
which allows dropping an entire DAQmx programming model onto the block diagram with a
single click.

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