Timing for a DAQ motor controller?

I am trying to help somebody with this - this is way out of my own domain of knowledge. What we want is some way of sending pulses to a DAQ-controlled motor; the frequency and duration of the pulses to be set by the user. We have two options: setting a timing (say 0.1 second on, 0.1 second off, for 2 minutes) and pressing "Run" (from a GUI), or simply entering a frequency (as before), pressing "Run" to start and "Stop" to finish. We've played around with "timer" and got ourselves very confused, and then we started peering into the Data Acquisition Toolbox. We can certainly start the motor from our GUI, although sending a Stop signal to a running process seems to be more difficult.

Anyway, I'm sure this sort of thing has been done before - can anybody give me advice on finding either examples of this, or material which would be helpful?

Many thanks, Alasdair

Answer 1

[Brandon Eidson]

Hello Alasdair, I understand you are wanting to control a motor using MathWorks products.  However, without more details about your problem, it is hard to provide detailed answers (E.g., Are you wanting to use MATLAB or Simulink?  What DAQ and motor are you using?  Are you open to other hardware to control the motor?   Is this GUI part of some software shipped with your hardware or is this already a MATLAB GUI).

But there is definitely some general direction I can provide.  There are multiple examples on MathWorks's website showing different ways to communicate with hardware.  The below list is not exhaustive.

1) http://www.mathworks.com/help/daq/control-stepper-motor-using-digital-outputs.html using the Instrument Control Toolbox and NI DAQ

2) using the Simulink Support Package for Raspberry Pi Hardware

3) using the Simulink Support Package for Arduino Hardware

I also highly recommend reviewing the functions and blocks in the Instrument Control Toolbox .  There are several general purpose hardware I/O there that might suit your application.