Dear NI community,
I use a NI USB-6211 and a NI PCIe-6321 with a BNC-2110 and Labview running on Windows 11.
I need to perform fluorescence imaging experiments: a camera acquire frames under alternating LED illumination ; and across this alternation a stimulus happen at a given time, and last for a certain time ; all of this represents an experimental trial. To achieve this goal I need to control 6 counters:
A) one to send triggers to the imaging camera
B) three to send triggers to LED for illumination
C) one to trigger the stimulus across trials
D) one to count the triggers sent to the camera in order to know the elapsed time
I use counters because an exact control of time is a necessity in my experiments. Indeed I can control the stimulus onset and duration with a counter delay, high and low times.
I use finite counter output generation.
It is important for me to dedicate one counter for camera triggers counting, because I will repeat experimental trials in for loops, and I want to know the inter-trial times.
I want to dedicate the two counters of NI USB-6211 for stimuli triggers and camera pulse counting.
I want to dedicate the four counters of NI PCIe-6321 for imaging triggers (camera and LED).
Therefore I need to synchronize the NI USB-6211 and NI PCIe-6321 respective counters.
Thanks to this tutorial I succeed to synchronize counters output on one device. To do so I use 'dev/freqout' as a trigger for the counters output.
My questions are the following:
- How can I synchronize counters from two DAQ devices (one PCIe and one USB device)?
- Is it possible to use an external time base for counter output ? Can I use the NI USB-6211 'dev/freqout' as a common time base for itself and the NI PCIe-6321, in order to feed their respective counter output ?
Please find enclosed my VI, it represents one experiment trial, that later I will put in for loops. I will add the counter input later.
I also added a drawing to illustrate what I want to achieve with the counters.
Thank you in advance for your help.