Use Digital Discovery as a quadrature decoder

[AlanB]

I have an application that needs to be able to decode/count the output from a quadrature encoder (A/B pulse output with an N pulse at the zero position) over a longer period of time than the internal buffer is able to capture.  I have managed to make it work by using the Digital Discovery's acqmodeRecord streaming capture and processing the samples in my application, but this will only work at lower rates than are ideal.

It seems like it should be comparatively simple for the hardware within the Digital Discovery to decode ABN signals as a "protocol" and output the current count value.  Is it possible to achieve this at the moment, or to add it in the future?

[Fausto]

Hello @AlanB.

Thank you for the suggestion.  

Please know that Digilent does offer other daq devices that support quadrature encoder inputs, i.e. USB-1808X and USB-QUAD08.

Regards,

Fausto

[AlanB]

Thank you for the pointing out the other products - however I already use the Digital Discovery in a range of other points in my test setup and would like to keep using this device to keep a common setup.  Do you see it being likely you would add this feature to the Digital Discovery?

[Fausto]

@AlanB,

The WaveForms developer can respond to the suggested feature.

In the meantime, take a look at the following related post.

 

[AlanB]

Thanks - I'd seen that link but had thought it operated in much the same way as my current application, i.e. to capture a buffer and send it to a PC to be processed there.  Is that not the case?

[AlanB]

On 9/6/2024 at 3:08 PM, Fausto said:

The WaveForms developer can respond to the suggested feature.

Is the developer able to give any feedback on the viability of the suggestion?

[attila]

Hi @AlanB

The latest version adds data compression for Digital Discovery. This could be used to decode such signals with higher resolution.

 

[AlanB]

3 minutes ago, attila said:

The latest version adds data compression for Digital Discovery. This could be used to decode such signals with higher resolution.

That's excellent, thanks.  I know we were talking about that in a different thread, and being able to increase the rates would help a certain amount here.  However, the "feature" in question was related to the ABN signals being decoded as a protocol within the Digital Discovery itself.  Do you see that as being possible/likely?