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Distributed Control & Automation Framework (DCAF)

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Is DCAF ready-made to implement in a completely a Windows (NO RT hardware) environment?

From the introductory information I've read, I'm thinking DCAF would fit my current project well. However, I notice there are a lot of references to RT hardware, that is something that's just not going to be a part of my project for many reasons which are out of my control.

 

I've gone down a few different paths, exploring some new to me, complex schemes, for this project that I thought could be better than the ways that I already know are within my abilities, and after considerable time they've ended up as inappropriate or dead ends of some sort. I can't afford another fruitless toil at this point.

 

So my main questions regarding DCAF are:

 

1) can it be implemented using only windows or is RT hardware necessary? Do things like examples/templates need RT hardware to run or are those things ready to go in a Windows only environment?

 

2) Is proficiency in LVOOP necessary to utilize it, or is it all under the hood or at least simple enough that someone with little LVOOP/OOP experience can get up to speed enough to make use of DCAF?

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Hello!

 

Some brief answers to your questions:

 

While it was designed to solve common issues with RT systems (and is optimized for the continuous control loop with single-point data use case), DCAF can and does run on Windows as well.  RT is not required, but you will find more benefits on an RT system.

 

With regard to LVOOP, you do not need to have any familiarity with LVOOP to use DCAF with existing modules.  You will need a minimum of LVOOP knowledge to make a simple static module (and we have a video tutorial to guide you).  You will need extensive LVOOP knowledge to customize the engine or create dynamic modules (such as protocol plugins)

Cheers,

Matt Pollock
National Instruments
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Thanks for such a quick & concise response!

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