PXI chassis 200m+ away; options?

[neesea]

Hey all. I have a couple PXI chassis located 200-300 meters away from my control center. Security issues prevent me from having anything with non-volatile memory inside the PXI chassis. We can argue about what constitutes non-volatile memory, but at the very least this eliminates "hard drives" including spinners and solid state. Unfortunately this means I can't use most/all PC-based PXI controllers.

I think I need a remote interface to get the data back to the control center. I see NI's fiber optic remote control cards such as PXIe-PCIe8375, but it looks like those are limited to about 100m on fiber. I've also seen a couple fiber optic PCIe extensions from other vendors that claim to work at 250m+. My guess is that I could use that to extend my PCIe way out to the chassis, and then use a short cable to attach to the PXI.

Ethernet might work also (I don't actually need much bandwidth), but I'm not aware of any basic Ethernet crate controllers that don't have hard disks.

Anyone have any of their own opinions about the best way to connect one or more very distant PXI chassis?

[AndyCandy]

Hi votton,

I think you're on the right track.  It looks like NI actually does sell a fiber optic cable that can run up to 200 m, according to the following link--http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/10359.

This link may also be helpful in configuring the entire remote system--http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/10359

[Robert.W]

votton,

Check your private messages.

robert