E Series Physical Channels

Dev1 in physical channel names is the default device name for E Series devices. You can change these names in MAX.

Analog Input

A 16-channel E Series device has physical channels ranging from Dev1/ai0 to Dev1/ai15. You can configure only channels 0 through 7 in differential mode. When you configure a channel in differential mode, the channel is the positive input and channel plus eight is the negative input. For instance, if you configure channel 1 in differential mode, the positive input is channel 1, and channel 9 is the negative input.

A 64-channel E Series device has physical channels ranging from Dev1/ai0 to Dev1/ai63. You can configure channels in banks of every other eight beginning with 0 through 7 as the positive channel of a differential pair (0-7, 16-23, 32-39, and 48-55). If N is this channel, channel N + 8 is the negative input of the pair.

Use only the physical channel name of the positive channel when creating a differential channel (not both).

Analog Output

An E Series device that supports analog output has two analog output physical channels named Dev1/ao0 and Dev1/ao1.

Digital Input and Output

All E Series devices except the NI 6025E have eight lines of digital input and output named Dev1/port0/line0 through Dev1/port0/line7. These lines belong to a single port, and the physical channel Dev1/port0 refers to all eight lines at once.

The NI 6025E has 32 lines of digital input and output with eight lines belonging to one of four ports. The names are of the form Dev1/portP/line0 through Dev1/portP/line7, where P ranges from 0 through 3. There are also four physical channel names that refer to all eight lines in a port at once of the form Dev1/portP, where P ranges from 0 through 3. There are two more physical channel names that refer to all the lines in multiple consecutive ports. They are both of the form Dev1/portP_N, where P is the port number of the lowest numbered port, and N is the total number of lines. All 32 lines at once can be configured as a single virtual channel with the physical channel name Dev1/port0_32. You can configure the two ports that can be handshaked as a single virtual channel by using the physical channel name Dev1/port1_16.

Counter Input and Output

All E Series devices have two counter/timers referred to by the physical channel names Dev1/ctr0 and Dev1/ctr1. Unlike the other I/O types, these physical channel names do not refer to terminals on the I/O connector but instead to circuits within the device. There are three primary terminals associated with each counter. These are the terminals used as the SOURCE, GATE and OUT functions. NI-DAQmx has default values for these terminals. For counter input tasks, if you know whether your signal provides the SOURCE or GATE function and wire your signal to the default, you do not have to set the Input Terminal attribute/property.

Refer to E Series Signal Connections for Counters for more information.