Chapter 4
Functional Overview
©
National Instruments Corporation
4-5
If an encoder resource is not needed for axis control, you can use it for any
number of other functions, including position or velocity monitoring, as a
digital potentiometer encoder input, or as a master encoder input for
master/slave (electronic gearing) applications.
Each axis also has an associated forward and reverse limit input, a home
input, a high-speed capture trigger input, a breakpoint output, and an inhibit
output. These signals can be used for general-purpose digital I/O when not
being used for their motion-specific purpose.
Onboard Programs and Buffers
The 7340 controller has full onboard programmability capable of executing
up to 10 simultaneous motion programs.
You can execute the NI-Motion function set from onboard programs.
In addition, the onboard programs support basic math and data operation
functions for up to 120 general-purpose variables.
You can store and run onboard programs and buffers from RAM or save
them to flash ROM. The 7340 controller has 64 KB of RAM and 128 KB
of ROM that is divided into two 64 KB sectors for program and buffer
storage. You can store and run programs and buffers from either RAM or
ROM, but you cannot split programs between the two, and you cannot split
programs or buffers between the two 64 KB ROM sectors.
Note
Refer to the
NI-Motion User Manual
for detailed information about all of these
onboard programming and buffer features.
Host Communications
The host computer communicates with the controller through a number of
memory port addresses on the host bus. The host bus can be either PXI or
PCI.
The primary bidirectional data transfer port supports FIFO data passing
in both send and readback directions. The 7340 controller has both a
command buffer for incoming commands and a return data buffer (RDB)
for returning data.
