Keep supporting NI-CAN

[labviewman]

Today I discovered NI has discontinued support for NI-CAN hardware (not XNET) beyond LabVIEW 2015SP1.   If you want to use your code with NI-CAN hardware and LabVIEW 2016 and beyond, you are out of luck unless you have the cash to buy XNET replacements and want to rewrite your code for the XNET API.

I have a very large J1939 simulation/monitor application I wrote and have supported for the past 8 years that is used on several lab benches and by numerous software developers across the country.  Now, we stuck with LV2015SP1 forever unless we can find a large amount of cash to replace all the NI-CAN hardware, which isn't going to happen anytime soon.

So, my idea is for NI to keep supporting NI-CAN in current and future versions of LabVIEW

[Taki1999]

Is there any official word on this? I couldn't find anything on the website about ending NI-CAN support and I'm in the same boat as you with lots of deployed applications with the NI USB-8473. If they really are killing it, I'd expect more advance notice. 

[Wire_Warrior]

The loss of NI-CAN support would not be good.   Looking forward to hearing an NI response on this.

[Hooovahh]

Where do you see that NI is no longer supporting NI-CAN drivers?  The fact that NI still sells their cheapo USB CAN devices that only support NI-CAN make me think that they aren't dropping support for them, but I could be wrong.  I do admit that I don't see any new drivers released in the last year, I just think it would be uncharacteristic of NI to drop driver support, for hardware they are still selling.  Even the product page doesn't say anything like NI is phasing out the hardware, or recommending other hardware for new designs.

Beyond that there isn't anything special about the NI-CAN drivers and you can probably just copy the files from 2015 into 2016 and it will likely work.

[labviewman]

Sorry, I should have stated in my original post that this info came from NI support...I had opened a support case to find out what was happening with NI-CAN, which is where I found out the bad news.

Here is a copy/paste from the support ticket:

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You are correct. NI - CAN is not supported by LabVIEW 2016.

The reason why I suggested to post to the idea exchange is that it lets R&D know that people are still interested in using the NI CAN driver with their devices in LabVIEW 2016. If enough people share this position then it may be something that R&D will look into.

Again I am sorry that I do not have more for you. All I can do is post to the idea exchange, as well. It is ultimately up to R&D to decide if they will add this functionality.

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[labviewman]

Please give the 'idea' Kudos to help put it into NI crosshairs...

[Evan_S]

Hi labviewman,

You are correct that NI-CAN does not currently support LabVIEW 2016, however we are not dropping support of the driver.

We will be releasing NI-CAN 16.0 later this year with support for LabVIEW 2016 and fully intend to continue supporting the driver to ensure that those interfaces can be used with the latest version of LabVIEW.

I apologize that support gave you the impression that we would consider not releasing updates. It is likely that future versions will not release the same week as other updates to NI software, however this is not the indication of end of support and we continue to recommend the USB-847x products for use. It is important to note that our PXI, PCI, and PCMCIA NI-CAN hardware is past its last time buy date, however the software will maintain support as long as is feasible with notice being given before support is ended.

If you do consider moving to the NI-XNET driver at any time, I wanted to make sure that those who find this thread are aware of the NI-XNET Compatibility Layer that allows NI-CAN code to be usedon NI-XNET devices during any transition period as well.

Migrating NI-CAN Applications to NI-XNET

If you have any detailed questions feel free to direct message me as well.

Best,

Evan_S

Product Manager

Automotive Communication Buses

[labviewman]

Thanks for the response Evan.

Miscommunications happen but I'm glad what I was told was wrong.

For us, changing code to support XNET wouldn't take very long, it's that we have numerous USB, PCI, and PXI cards that would have to be replaced which will be quite expensive and would take 6 months of paperwork because of the cost (everything is difficult in the government).

Todd

[Evan_S]

Thanks for the feedback Todd.

We are always striving to provide both the migration paths to the newest hardware/software for those who would like it and long lifecycle support for those who need to standardize on over life of a system.

-Evan

[Darren]

NI-CAN support policy is outlined here: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Keep-supporting-NI-CAN/idc-p/3336034#M35648

[Hooovahh]

FYI NI-CAN 16.0 is out with support for LabVIEW 2016.