A/D and D/A Channels for Testing & Control

• synchronized operation of the RTB and two EVMs
• 3 16 multiplexed channels of A/D
• 4 D/A channels
• Butterworth filters
• Debug monitor under C-programming
• 0.5MByte 0-wait state RAM on the Real-time Board
• 8 KByte 0-wait state RAM on each EVM
• Outlier detection
• Frequency selective digital filters
• Smoothing filters for D/A channels

MATLAB/ C++ platform

Although MATLAB is a self-contained environment for programming, in vibration control is often useful to interact with data and programs external to MATLAB.

Calling C/C++ subroutines directly from MATLAB

Shell escape functions and MEX-files are two methods for calling our own C/C++ subroutines directly from MATLAB. These two methods, along with M-files, can be used to add new commands and functions to the MATLAB language. Shell escape functions make external stand-alone programs act like new MATLAB functions. MEX-files are dynamically linked subroutines that the MATLAB interpreter can automatically load and execute. Shell escape functions and MEX-files have several applications:

• Large pre-existing C/C++ programs can be called from MATLAB without rewriting them as M-files.
• Bottleneck computations (usually for-loops) that do not run fast enough in MATLAB can be recoded in C/C++ for efficiency.
• A/D cards, D/A cards, and other PC hardware can be accessed directly for data acquisition and control applications.
• Custom Windows user interfaces can be created.

Calling MATLAB from our C/C++ environment

The MATLAB Engine Library is a set of routines that allows MATLAB to be called from our own programs, thereby employing MATLAB as a computation engine. Some of the things one can do with the MATLAB engine are

Call a math routine to invert a matrix or to compute an FFT from your own program. When employed in this manner, MATLAB is a powerful and programmable mathematical subroutine library.

Call a graphics routine to plot some data or to draw a 3-D colour surface from your own program. Used this way, MATLAB is a sophisticated graphics subroutine library.

The MATLAB engine operates by running in the background as a separate process from the C/C++ program.

Contact: Dr S M Veres, tel.:44-(0)121-414 4346, fax: 414 3143, e-mail: s.m.veres@bham.ac.uk

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