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FP-2000 and Labview 8.6

I just read on NI's webpage that I will not be able to upgrade my standard FP-2000 to LV 8.6, is this true?  Or can I run an older version of RT on the controller and utilize LV 8.6? 

 

If I can't upgrade the RT sofware, does NI offer an upgrade to cFP for all of us regular FP users?  I have 7 FP-2000 controllers, still active and running code.  If I need to upgrade them to cFP units, it will cost us a bunch of cash and leave a real sour taste in our mouths towards NI.  

 

Thanks,

 

Bill 

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Bill,

 

Unfortunately this is true.  Since the version of RT on FP needs to match the version on the development machine, you will need to maintain an older copy of LV for your FP-20xx if you decide to upgrade to LV8.6 

 

Yes, the taste is bad, and maintaining my cFP-20xx's is going to be a pain.  I am currently experimenting with running two versions on the same PC.

 

I can only hope that if enough users complain that NI might change their position.

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Hi Bill and Centerbolt.  I'll add my two cents 🙂

 

Depending on how you communicate with your RT app on the FieldPoint controller, you may be able to run

a mixed environment, i.e. 8.5.1 or earlier on the controller, 8.6 on the PC side.  If you use just low level TCP

to communicate, you should be fine.  VI server may be more challenging, although we have done this with

6.1 on the controller and 7.1 on the PC.  Try it and see, and test thoroughly.

 

In any case, I share your dismay at the extra difficulty of maintaining two development environments.  We

just designated a PC as the 'RT 6.1 controller' only development machine.

 

One futher thought, my understanding is that the -21xx series is architectually similar to the -20xx series,

and the -21xx is supported in newer LV versions.  I expect the prohibition _may_ be administrative rather than

technical.  Testing this is on my to do list, just haven't gotten that far yet.  We probably have 150 to 200 -2010

controllers deployed, so this will be a big deal for us.

 

Matt

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Matt,

 

Communication via low level TCP is a good idea.

 

My impression has been that the 20xx series just did not run well when users started blindly using shared network variables, timed loops and some of the other new RT features that were introduced after LV 7.x.  I know for instance that the 2020 was the only controller in this series that has enough memory to support shared variables.  And while I have successfully gotten the shared variable engine to run on a 2020,  performance was not the best and I had to pay very close attention to memory and cpu utilization.  Perhaps NI decided that supporting the 20xx series was no longer worth the hassle given all the newer features of RT that either won't run or don't run well.

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Centerbolt,

 

I think you are probably right; -20xx is just too tight on memory for some of the new features.

We have -2010 controllers running using network shared variables as clients only (8.5.1), they work

fine but we have to watch the memory.  We don't have enough memory for them to be the

shared variable servers, which means we have to do a custom OS install in the controllers.  Minor 

hassle, but manageable.

 

Matt

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Thank you both for sharing your frustrations.  I am not concerned with new applications, but support of older apps.  on this hardware, as both of you have mentioned. 

 

I have a different logging system that is 20 years old, but when they upgrade software and hardware, it is all backwards compatibile.  For the price NI charges, we aught to have some simplistic environment native to Labview that will talk and update code for the FP-20xx line while allowing more advanced programming for the newer controllers, all without having to maintain a LV 8.5xx environment. 

 

I am going to contact my NI rep. and let them know my concerns, please add any other suggestions or comments to this thread.

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I understand that many users are surprised by the fact that LabVIEW 8.6 doesn't support the (c)FP20xx controller series anymore. I admit that it was not communicated very well.

Since the memory footprint for LabVIEW 8.6 together with NI Fieldpoint 6.03 has grown to around 14 MByte, it is basically impossible to run this package together with customer code on (c)FP 2000 controllers, because they only have 16 MB available.

Besides we were not successful in getting the LV 8.6 stack stable on 20xx in for various technical reasons and decided to drop support for this generation of controllers.

However there are several upgrade, trade-in, workaround solutions available and I srongly recommend to contact your sales representative to get more information.

I cannot guarantee to find a solution for every single issue but I am confident to solve most of the issues without to much headache.

 

DirkW
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Hi Matt,

 

I saw your comment about having 150-200 controllers deployed and had some questions about your system.  Would you mind if National Instruments contacted you about your application?

 

P.S.  If any of the other posters would also like NI to contact them concerning this issue, please just reply back to this post and let me know.

 

Thanks,

Irene B

National Instruments

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Yes, please contact me. 

 

Thanks,

 

Bill S.

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Hi Irene.  Not a problem at all to contact me.  215-884-8123 x. 111.

 

Matt

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