How to configure non-NI card in RT environment?

[yangxin1204]

We have set up our RT environment with your warm help. Now we faced another question. We have some non-NI cards and do not know how to install drivers of these cards.

When launch MAX in host computer, only NI serial cards can be seen.

Could you give us some advice?
Thank you!!

Best regards,
Yang Xin

[Kristi_P]

Hello Yang Xin,

You can create your own VISA based driver for your third party device. The following links should help you get started with this process:

KnowledgeBase 247CIO4U. Can I Use a Third Party Driver with LabVIEW Real-Time(RT)?

Configuring LabVIEW Real-Time and NI-VISA to Recognize a Third Party Device

Please post a reply if you have further questions.

Regards,

Kristi H
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[yangxin1204]

Hello Kristi,
Thank you for your advice.
Non-NI cards have their own .inf files. We used FILE FTP Tool from MAX to transfer these .inf files to RT system but it seemd that the system can not recognize those files.Then we began to configure our cards following"Configuring LabVIEW Real-Time and NI-VISA to Recognize a Third Party Device".However, we don't know where to find the
PXI Manufacturer ID,Subsystem Manufacturer ID,Manufacturer Name and PXI Model Code.

From MAX, I can see PXI model and PXI Manufacturer of a NI card.But how about these Non-NI cards?

Best Regards,
Yang Xin

[Kristi_P]

Hello Yang,

You will probably need to contact the manufacturer of your device to get the PXI model and PXI Manufacuter values. Those are usually hardcoded on the device itself.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Kristi H
National Instruments

[yangxin1204]

Hello Kristi,

We found the PXI model and relating values from its own .INF file. Using these values, we configured the non-NI card with VISA Driver Development Wizard and got another .inf file.
We compared this .inf file(we call it file 1) with the original one(we call it file 2) and found that some important information is missed. The information includes:
[L13.copyfiles]
BTIVNIV.VXD
L13W32.DLL
BTIKRNL.DLL
After we copied these to file 1 and ftp it to RT controller, we ran a VI in host computer and still got an error"can't load shared library".

How can we go on?
Please help us, thank you.

Regards,
Yang xin

[Kristi_P]

Hello Yang Xin,

If you are trying to access third party external code from LabVIEW RT, we cannot support that as described in the KnowledgeBase I linked earlier. As the KnowledgeBase says, "We do not offer LabVIEW RT support for applications that call external code. You can link the third-party instrument driver code to your LabVIEW RT application via Call Library Nodes, but we cannot guarantee that all the functions in the external code will be supported."

In the document you referenced for creating your own inf file, it was describing the first steps toward writing your own device driver using VISA to access the registers on your device. It's sounding like you are still trying to access a third party driver.

If you
can clarify what the situation is, perhaps I can provide more assistance.

Regards,

Kristi H
National Instruments