Why doesn't frequency outputs work as expected?

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GTIspirit
Posts: 249
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:20 am
Location: SE Michigan

Why doesn't frequency outputs work as expected?

Post by GTIspirit »

I'm having some trouble getting the frequency outputs to work properly, why don't they work as expected? I thought I'm doing everything correctly, maybe I got something wrong?

DIP switches are set to OFF.

Pulse menu configuration shown below.

Pulse channel configuration, one shown below, remainder as follows:
FreqOut1 is set to 25
FreqOut2 is set to 50
FreqOut3 is set to 75

Sensor monitor shown below:

P.S. what are the units for the time period in the advanced window? Seconds, milliseconds? What are the permissible range of values?
Attachments
Pulse Menu
Pulse Menu
Pulse_Menu.jpg (46.32 KiB) Viewed 2878 times
Advanced pulse channel output
Advanced pulse channel output
Advanced_Pulse_Output.jpg (33.5 KiB) Viewed 2878 times
Sensor monitor
Sensor monitor
Sensor_Monitor.jpg (37.52 KiB) Viewed 2878 times

GTIspirit
Posts: 249
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:20 am
Location: SE Michigan

Post by GTIspirit »

This is strange, I made the following changes and now the lights are all on quite bright:

Logging Precision changed from 2 to 0.
Period changed from 100 to 1.

Sensor monitoring has the following output values:
FreqOut1 = 2.00
FreqOut2 = 1.00
FreqOut3 = -75.00

So FreqOut3 is kind of the 75% default value at startup. Just not sure where what appears to be a negative comes from.... But FreqOut1 and 2 don't match at all 25% and 50% respectively.

And the lights aren't blinky. I expect that if the time period is long enough they will blink. And if the time period was very short they just might be variable brightness. So what is going on here?

GTIspirit
Posts: 249
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 11:20 am
Location: SE Michigan

Post by GTIspirit »

Hmmm, it looks like the scaling isn't as I expect.

In the advanced menu I change each FreqOut channel to 100 time period and scaling 1. With the same 25, 50, and 75 the sensor monitor says:
FreqOut1 = 25.00
FreqOut2 = 100.00
FreqOut3 = -75.00

In the advanced menu I change each FreqOut channel to 50 time period, keeping scaling 1. With the same 25, 50, and 75 the sensor monitor says:
FreqOut1 = 25.00
FreqOut2 = 50
FreqOut3 = -75.00

And the yellow LED is now off. So 50.00 on the sensor monitor must really be 100% since the light is off. :?:

In the advanced menu I change each FreqOut channel to 25 time period, keeping scaling 1. With the same 25, 50, and 75 the sensor monitor says:
FreqOut1 = 25.00
FreqOut2 = 25.00
FreqOut3 = -75.00

And the green LED is now off :!: Which is definitely strange because FreqOut 1 is green and FreqOut 2 is yellow. How can both have the same sensor monitor value and yet visibly have different results? :?:

In the advanced menu I keep each FreqOut channel to 25 time period, changing scaling to 0.5. With the same 25, 50, and 75 the sensor monitor says:
FreqOut1 = 12.00
FreqOut2 = 25.00
FreqOut3 = -75.00

BTW, same as above, green LED is off, yellow and red are on.

So clearly there is some relationship between duty cycle, time period and scaling which I don't understand.

What I am trying to configure is a time period of say 2s, so with a 50% duty cycle the light would be off for 1s and on for 1s, and the Sensor Monitor would show 50%.

Maybe my expectations are not aligned with the given functionality?

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