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USB Low Speed Interface options doubled in price?

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I just noticed that all the NI USB CAN Interfaces for Low Speed (like USB-8472 for example) are now defined as Legacy, and are no longer recommended... - And none of the updated options support Low Speed(!?). The only low speed USB alternative I can find is to combine a 9861 C Series Module with a CompactDAQ chassis...(dubbed a "USB-9862") which happens to cost twice as much Smiley Mad  ?

I guess we would start to see diminished support for low speed sooner or later as most industries move to other alternatives, but the oil and gas industry e.g. will still be standardized on low speed for many years to come. Having to suddenly pay twice as much for the same functionality is not exactly a welcome change. Will there be an updated model from NI (like the two for high speed) for low speed with a comparable price anytime, or is the 9862 the only option for this use case from now on?

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To be fair I don't think this is a sign that NI wants to deprecate low speed or not support it.  It is more an effort to deprecate the NI-CAN interface in favor of XNet.  I'm guessing NI-CAN has lead to a decent amount of support calls for its general not user friendly interface for some higher level communications.  And so NI has been looking to move away from it for years.  I praised NI when I finally saw a lower cost USB XNet interface, but that is only for a single port or dual port high speed.  High speed CAN is obviously more common than low speed and so NI likely just came out with the high speed product first, and is then testing the waters to see if a low speed USB option is a product people will buy.

 

That being said there is another (costly) but versatile option from NI.  If you get the single slot USB chassis, and pair it with a 9860, and two TRC-8543 transceivers, than you get two CAN ports that can be either high speed or low speed, on a single USB port, for $1,967.  Yes it is still double the cost of two legacy low speed ports.  But this only takes up a single USB port, and can be high speed or low speed, and the card can be reused for LIN (by changing the transceiver), and you can reuse the hardware in the future by using a different single slot card, or by putting the XNet cards into a larger chassis, and the largest benefit of all is being able to use XNet which has better support for hardware re-transmits, larger buffers, and many modes for various things that previously would have to be implemented in software.  (run on sentences much?)

 

As a disclaimer I have never paired this single slot chassis with this card, you'll want to read the manuals to ensure they are compatible. (older single slot chassis didn't support all cards but I think they do now).  And as a slight downside you do need to power the single slot card with 9-32VDC.  It draws more power than the chassis is able to power it so it needs dedicated power which isn't too difficult to get when working with automotive.

 

I work with low speed very seldomly, and single wire even less.  If you are looking for a cheap multi-port option, you may want to look into Intrepids line of hardware.  There is a decent set of drivers, which are somewhat comparable with NI-CAN, and the Fire for $2k you get 3 high speed CAN, 1 medium speed, one single wire, one low speed, and 4 LIN, on a single USB.  NI support will be nill, and the drivers are Windows only at the moment.  The Fire 2 has even more IO for $2,700.

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The indications that the NI USB CAN Interfaces Low-Speed/Fault Tolerant devices are "Mature, Not recommended for new designs" are meant to signal the beginning of NI's (long-term) deprecation of the NI-CAN Interfaces. This note also appears for the NI CAN High-Speed Interfaces as well, however they have a more direct replacement. We will communicate dates as the hardware nears obsolescence. This is very similar to the deprecation of our "Series 2" PXI/PCI/PCMCIA NI-CAN hardware that was made obsolete in 2016. The NI-CAN software will maintain support as long as is feasible with notice being given before support is ended.

 

We currently offer CAN LS/FT in NI-XNET in the CompactDAQ/CompactRIO (NI 9861), PXI (PXI-8511 and PXI-8513), and in 2017 we added the Hardware Selectable Transceiver Cables capable of CAN LS/FT (TRC-8543).

 

In mid-2018, we also expect to add a USB CAN LS/FT variant. It will be very similar to the 2-Port USB-8502 including cost. This will be the official replacement for the USB-8472. We prioritized first launching CAN HS/FD and LIN models due to the comparatively high volumes, but plan to continue to support CAN LS/FT for the foreseeable future.

 

 

Best,

Evan_S

Product Manager

Automotive Communication Buses

Evan See
National Instruments
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