Configuring a Displacement Measurement with NI-DAQmx

To configure a measurement, specify the initial sensor position through the Initial Angle attribute/property. You also can specify if the Z Input Terminal is used with the Z Index Enable attribute/property. You can configure the reload position on a Z index, and when a Z index position should cause a reload to occur in relation to the A and B signals, by using the Z Index Phase and Z Index Value attributes/properties, respectively.

When performing a single point, or on-demand, displacement measurement, you first arm the counter by calling the Start Task function/VI. Each subsequent read returns the current position of the encoder. If you perform multiple reads without first starting the counter, the counter implicitly starts and stops with each Read function/VI call, and the position is not recorded properly between read calls.

With a buffered displacement measurement, the device latches the current position onto each active edge of the sample clock and stores the position in the buffer. There is no onboard clock for buffered displacement measurement, so you must supply an external sample clock.