Acquisition of Temperature
Data Using NI PCI-6221 DAQ
Card, NI SCC-68 DAQ Board
and NI SCC-TC01
Thermocouple Module
Place a jumper wire on the SCC-68 data acquisition board as shown in the figure below:
Turn the power supply switch (Number 4 in the figure below) to the ON position (LED will be lit) on the
SCC-68.
Go to the National Instruments “Measurement and Automation” program.
Left click “Devices and Interfaces” and then right click to “Create New”.
Under “NI-DAQmx SCC Connector Block”, highlight “SCC-68” and click “Finish”. This tells the computer
that a SCC-68 data acquisition board is attached.
On the “SCC-68 Configuration” window under “Devices and Interfaces”, highlight “SCC-TC01” for “SCCMod1”. This tells the SCC-68 that a thermocouple reader module (SCC-TC01) is placed in slot #1. Do this
for all four module slots.
Under “Devices and Interfaces”, highlight “NI PCI-6221: “Dev1””, then click the “Properties” tab
Under “Accessory” highlight “SCC-68”. This tells the data acquisition card (NI PCI-6221) in the back of the
computer that a data acquisition board (SCC-68) is attached.
Under “Configure”, check the box “Temperature Reference Enabled”. Then press “OK” and “OK”. This
allows for the use of the thermistor circuitry on the module to compensate for cold-junction effects.
The computer now knows the following:

A data acquisition card (NI PCI-6221) is installed in the back of the computer

A data acquisition board (SCC-68) is connected to the data acquisition card

An SCC-TC01 Module is installed in all four module slots on the data acquisition board
The computer is now ready to read thermocouple data from the four modules. The front panel of
reader06.vi (data acquisition virtual instrument) and a typical output data file in Excel are shown below.
http://www.cs.wright.edu/people/faculty/sthomas/reader06.vi
Note the following:
1. You must direct “Thermocouple 1” to “SCC1Mod1/ai0”, “Thermocouple 2” to “SCC1Mod2/ai0”,
etc.
2. You must direct all of the unused voltage channels to one that is not being used. In the case
shown below, the voltage channels are all directed to Analog Input 07 (Dev1/ai7).
3. The thermocouple type is set to Type E for all thermocouples.
4. The “Record?” button is activated only for the channels of interest.
5. The “Time Between Data Points” is set to 1 second.
6. The “Derivative Averaging Time” is set to 60 seconds.