USBADC11 startup

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robj85
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USBADC11 startup

Post by robj85 »

I'm having problems using the USBADC11/10 from Delphi, I'm adapting an old program to use the USBADC11 insted of the parallel version.
I can only get the software to work if I load picoscope, do a log, close picoscope then run the Delphi app. If I don't load picoscope first the Delphi app hangs when it tries to access the ADC, I presume I need to initalise the ADC somehow but can't find out how.

I'm using the ADC1132.dll with the adc11.inc file as I'm new to Delphi and can't work out how to write an inc file for USBADC11.dll

Please can anyone tell me how to either initalise the ADC before using ADC1132.dll or how to write an inc file for USBADC11.dll

Many thanks

ziko
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Post by ziko »

Hi and thank you for your post.

Currently we are running a limited service over the Christmas period and as such I cannot answer any programming questions. However we will be operating fully from next week.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Kind regards
Ziko

Technical Specialist

robj85
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Post by robj85 »

Hi, I've managed to get my USBADC11 to open now by adding the functions from the USBADC11Api.h file into the ADC11.inc and converting the data types from C to delphi but I'm still having problems, is there any documentation on the USB functions similar to the descriptions in the ADC11.pdf for the parallel functions? as they don't seem to be directly comparable.

I have managed to get the USB unit working by setting the port and device to 101 and 111 but I still have to use the UsbAdc11OpenUnit and the adc11_open_unit function to get the datalogger to be recognised and it doesn't operate with all of the old parallel functions in the same manner as the paralell data logger.

I'd like to ditch the old dll and use all USB functions, are there any usb delphi examples I could look at?

ziko
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Post by ziko »

Hi and thank you for your post.

We do not currently have any documentation for the function calls of the USB ADC11 however they are very similar to the parallel one. I have attached a USB example in Excel (using macros), which is not in the examples directory. This may help you with your programming.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards.
Attachments
usbadc11.xls
(36 KiB) Downloaded 611 times
Ziko

Technical Specialist

me

usbadc11 and delphi

Post by me »

Hi Robj85,

tried the usbadc11 with delphi, too.

Same Experience, due to the bad, worse or worst Documentation of PicoTech. After a real long time of observing the Pico programs with debuggers and so on, i got the stuff running. Did the same way as you, translated the C-Headers to Pascal, but you should use the usbadc11.dll directly. If you mix it with the adc1132.dll, you get unpredictable shit. Still i have missing values in the range of 10 to 20 ms, from time to time (between 1 and 10 minutes) the whole stuff stops when trying to retrieve data with the 'gettimesandvalues' function. The streaming stuff is really sucking, there was no possibility for me to keep it running over long time. In high speed mode my programs are now running for days and the stuff i need from there looks quite good.
The Stops and Lacks seem to come from programming faults in the usbadc11.dll,
which seems to be a wrapper around a threaded data retrieval program, that lacks from time to time completely. But maybe with better support from pico (oh, thanks sarah, i'm able to download myself, without your help) all looks much better ?? But as i can see in this forum, the answers are short and not good enough for developping staff. (Hey Ziko, what does it help, when you tell people to look in the Excel Stuff when they ask for delphi stuff, there's no really explanation in there, is it?)

The whole thing took a extremely long time, spend me a lot of bad reputation with my customer and i learned what it means to get support from people that hopefully only had a bad day, when asking for more then 'Where do i have to click in your software to stop it'.

If you are interested in further information, don't hesitate to ask me on
schindler at schintech dot net

cheers

wolf

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