Realization of the Motor Data Acquisition and
Analyzation System Based on the
Producer/Consumer Model of Labview
Sheng Zhi-yu
School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University
Beihang University
Beijing,China
hnyzxs@126.com
Abstract—To solve the problems of motor’s data acquisition
system’s low automation level, too less data channel, limited
apply areas. This paper introduced a kind of motor’s data
acquisition and analyzation system which were developed based
on producer/consumer model and LabVIEW program. This
system can fulfil the tasks of multi-channel data acquisition, data
analyzation and display, data saving and loading. By setting two
different data acquiring frequencies, that’s 2kHz and 20kHz, to
acquire the same signal that produced by the signal generator
and analyzing the data that were acquired. According to the
analysis and data fitting results the benefits and short comes was
concluded. These tests suggested that the signal can be
represented by this two kind of data acquiring frequency and the
standard error that the 2kHz had is bigger than that of 20kHz
had. So, the test’s result proved that this system works well and
easy to realize.
Keywords—LabVIEW; Data acquisition; Producer/Consumer;
Data acquiring frequency; Data fitting；
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, many kinds of motors like stepping motors,
permanent magnet synchronous motor(PMSM), Switched
Reluctance Motor(SRM) play a vital role in modern production
process. It is very important to make sure that motor can work
efficiently and stably. Acquiring motor’s running data is the
first step for analyzing the motor’s health condition and failure
diagnosis. So, it is very important to do some research about
the motor’s data acquiring.
Programs such as VC, MATLAB, Basic, LABVIEW are
widely used in designing this kind of system. LABVIEW,
particularly, is the most popular, developed and powerful
graphical virtual instrument development tool. LABVIEW
have many functions, it can fulfil the tasks of data acquiring,
data analyzing, signal output, input and output controlling. The
existing system always has some inadequacies such as some
cannot alter acquiring methods, some don’t have data
analyzing, some are difficult to scale up to more large system.
The system proposed in this paper was developed on
LABVIEW. It uses producer/consumer model and can be used
to acquire and process muti-channel motor’s data. The
acquiring frequency, acquiring channel and acquiring time all
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can be easily set by user. The system can also save and load the
data that have acquired.
II. PROGRAM DESIGN MODEL
Program design model refers to a number of useful
structures. These structures usually are easy to read, easy to
maintain, and suitable for various occasions. Pipeline structure,
state machines, producer/consumer structure are widely used in
LABVIEW programming.
A. Pipeline structure
Pipeline structure works just like the production line. Every
function and data are processed step by step. The data can only
be processed by one function at a time. Every function works
during each circulation, but each function can only deal with
different data. Only if all function has finished their process
this circulation ended and the next circulation begins. The
pipeline structure provides a kind of model to deal with the
data. It ensures the correctness of the function. The time
needed is determined by the longest function in the whole
program. The program works efficiently when all the functions
need similar time to process. If the time gap between different
functions is very large the system will work inefficiently.
B. State machine
State machine or finite state machine (FSM) is a kind of
math model that usually used in describing the changes and
functions between different states. It is widely used in
computer program designing and sequential logic circuit
designing. Usually state machine contains four elements-
current states, condition, action, next state. Current state is
what the program works now. When specific condition is
meted, the program will change the works that it going to do
that means the program come to the next state. And what it
going to do in the state is called the action. State machine is
widely used in monitoring, controlling or some kind of logical
system.
C. Producer/consumer
Producer/consumer model contains multi circulation, in
each circulation different function will be processed at different
speed. Some circulation works as a producer which produces
data and information which would be analyzed in the consumer
circulation. Two kinds of circulations by certain
communication method to communicate and transfer data.
Consumer/producer model solves the program’s multi-process
synchronization problem.It can make sure that the system does
not lose any data or repeat the analysis. It helps to ensure the
integrity of the data. This model can easily be found in java or
C++ program.
III. HARDWARE BUILDING
The whole system is consisted of a computer, a data
acquisition card, a motor and its controller, voltage sensor and
current sensor. The data acquisition card is a PCIE-6321
produced by national instrument. This card has 16 analog input
channels and 2 analog out channels. It also has 24 channels that
support digital input and output. The maximum analog input
speed is 250kS/s. And the ad converter’s resolution is 16 bits.
The input range for this card is ±10V. The whole system’s
hardware structure is presented in fig1. The motor in this
system is a kind of AC servo motor which was made by
DELTA company.The motor’s phase current signal line, line
voltage signal line, speed signal line, bus current signal line
and other signal lines are all connected with their
correspondent sensor. The sensor’s output connected with the
acquisition card, in that case, the data can be transferred
through the system into the computer.
Fig.1. The overall hardware structure of acquisition and
processing system
IV. SOFTWARE REALIZATION
This data acquisition and processing system for the motor
are based on the producer-consumer design model. Data
acquisition, data display and analysis, data saving and loading
are the system’s main parts. Data acquisition are the main
producer part and the others are the consumer part.
There are too many channels that need to be shown on the
front panel. If all graphs are arranged just in one screen that
will make it very hard to see the graph clearly. So in this
system the tabs are used. The system’s front panel is showed in
fig 7. The left buttons are used to select the signals that are
intended to acquire. The right buttons are used to set and
control the acquiring process.
A. Data acquisitions
The main points about the data acquisition are the selection
of sampling rate. The data that transferred to the computer are
discrete digital data, so according to the Nyquist law that only
when the sampling frequency is greater than twice the highest
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frequency of the original analog signal can be the acquired
signal restore the original waveform. In consideration of the
motor’s voltage frequency, the default sampling rate is 2kHz.
In order to make this system work efficiently in various
operating conditions, the system also allows users to select
different sampling frequency and the length of the sampling
time.
When the system is running, if user clicks the start
acquiring button the system will start acquiring according to
the setting of the acquiring rate, the number of data that need to
be acquired, the channels that need to be sampled. The figure2
shows how to accomplish the sampling work. First the “create
the task.vi” read the “analog sampling rate” and create the task.
Then “daqmx read.vi” gets the task and starts to sample. While
the vi is sampling it puts the data into the “analog sampling
queue”. After all the data sampling have accomplished the
system will decide whether continue sampling according to the
user’s setting. By the end of the sampling process all the data
have been put into the queue.
Fig.2. Part of the data acquisition program
B. Data display
Display and analysis part is a different circulation from the
acquisition part. It is the consumer section. In this circulation,
first the program will check whether there are data in the
“analog sampling queue”. If the queue is not empty, the
program will separate the data by the channel that set by user.
If the sampling process has done more than once, the program
will combine the different data through the “append
waveforms.vi”into a completed waveform. This waveform will
be used for further process. Then the waveform will pass
through some wave filter that can delete some noise in the data
and be analyzed.
The figure3 shows how this process works to the A phase
voltage channel. The data will go through the “filter express.vi",
"A phrase voltage stastics.vi", "signal analysis.vi",
"FFTSpectrum(mag-phase).vi" one by one. Through these
processes the signal's statistics like standard deviation, variance,
frequency, phase, THD can acquire. These statistics are
displayed in the front panel. Also, the data's Fourier
Transformation results are displayed to help user to understand
the harmonic component in the waveform.
Fig.3. Part of the program that analysis the A phase voltage
C. Data storage and loading
Data saving and loading function are also very important
for the whole system. In the LABVEW, the TDMS format is
widely used in waveform saving and loading. The TDMS file
is a kind of binary record that developed and promoted by the
National Instrument. This kind of structure has high speed,
easy to store, convenient to modify and many other advantages.
This system uses the event structure to fulfil the tasks of saving
and loading. When user clicks the "saving all waveform"
button, the corresponding program in the event structure will
start running. The program is showed in fig6. First the "file
dialog" enquires the user of the saving location information.
Then, system uses "create TDMS" to create a TDMS file. After
this, it uses "TDMS writing" to save the data from the queue
and button information into TDMS file. At last, the TDMS
reference is closed by the program. Also, when user click the
"loading waveform" button, the system will read the file that
chosen by the user. Then the data in the file will be displayed
in the system.
V. TEST EXPERIMENT
Before applying the system into actual using, the signal
generator was used to test the whole system's function. The
signal generator can generate signals that contain little noise
and very easy to recognize, it's widely used in system testing
condition. The signal generator used in this testing is SG1646A
which made by the Jiangsu Right Electronic Equipment
company. This generator is used to produce sine waveform
with an amplitude of 8V and a 500Hz frequency.
A. 2kHz frequencies sampling
2kHz frequency is used to sample the sine wave that
generated by the signal generator, and some analysis has been
done on the waveform. The sampling and analysis results are
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showed in the fig8. It is clear from the fig that the waveform
acquired from the acquisition card is like a kind of sine wave
which amplitude change periodically. The frequency spectrum
of the acquired signal showed the wave’s main frequency is
508Hz, the data analysis showed that the waveform amplitude
is 8.27, consistent with the signal generator’s information.
Export the collected data, and use the supply voltage channel’
s first 200 data to redraw the waveform. The new waveform is
showed in the fig4. It can be seen from the graph that the
signal’s amplitude showed periodical change. There are some
distortions in the sampling data. These results showed that the
original analog signal can be restored from the acquired data,
but the relative position of each sampling point is in change.
The reason for this is when the sampling frequency and signal
frequency do not match, the sampling points’ position may
vary in different period. The 2kHz frequency was used to
sample the 500Hz signal, so in one period there were only four
points acquired. So, the movement in the fig is very obvious.
Fig.4. 2kHz sampling results
B. 20kHz sampling frequency
Change the sampling frequency to 20kHz and resample the
500Hz signal. The sampling results are showed in fig9.
We can see from the diagram that the sampled waveform is
relatively good. Spectrum analysis and waveform analysis
showed that the amplitude and main frequency of the wave is
8.3V and 508Hz. The analysis results indicate that the acquired
data are more desirable. This time, uses the supply voltage
channel’s first 200 data to redraw the waveform again, as
showed in fig5. We can see that the wave of fig5 is very similar
to the standard sine wave form and the acquired data is very
ideal. This may be due to the points that collected in one period
is become more, the time distance between different points is
smaller, so the movement is not obvious as before.
Fig.5. 20kHz sampling results
C. Comparisons The system was developed by the LABVIEW and it can
TableI gives the part of the information about the two acquire multi analog signals. Users can set an appropriate
data’s curve-fitting results. sampling frequency, sampling channels and the filter frequency
for different conditions. The system is easy to develop and
Table I PART OF THE RESULTS OF DATA FITTING have complete function, very suitable for engineering using
Frequency w A purpose.
Standard Standard
Value Value The signal generator was used to test the system’s function
Error Error
5.50E- and the comparison was made between 2kHz and 20kHz
2kHz 1.964 5.83E-07 4.014 sampling results. The fitting and analysis of the data shows that
04
these two sampling data all can be used to restore the original
20kHz 19.663 5.008E-6 4.021 2.36E-4 waveform. But, the 2kHz sampled waveforms showed a certain
deviation. Therefore 20kHz sampling frequency should be
The formula of this waveform fitting is applied to a system which acquisition equipment resources are
rich and required accurate waveform information. On the other
y = y 0 + A × sin( pi × ( x − xc) / w) (1) hand, 2KHz sampling frequency is suitable in the system
According to this formula, the frequency is which acquisition devices with limited resources. It can acquire
the correct data and information, but the waveform error is
=f ω= 1/ 2 w (2) relatively large.
2π
The curve-fitting results do not take the sampling time into
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Fig.6. Part of the storage program

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 Fig.7. The front panel display

Fig.8. Using 2kHz sampling frequency to sample 500Hz sine wave

Fig.9. Using 20kHz sampling frequency to sample 500Hz sine wave

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