PXI-8186 Embedded Controller

[calebyaj]

I have a PXI-8186 Embedded Controller with a 6515, 6025, and 1409 cards. My problem is recently the processor has been locking up and the monitor lost communication with the processor. There's no way to recover this lock-up except power the system off and back on. Has anyone have this problem with their system?

[Minh T.]

Good afternoon calebyaj,

Thanks for contacting National Instruments with your issue, we will try our best to resolve this issue as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

There are no known issues with the stability of the 8186 controller.  Are you experiencing these lock-ups while running in Windows XP, or while running in the RT OS (pharlap) environment? 

Is there a particular action or process that's occuring when this occurs? I.e. during a long-running acquisition or during some sort of configuration.  Or does it just occur randomly after a certain period of time?

There have been instances where if the chassis is not not well ventilated enough (i.e. air holes blocked) that the process will shut down once a thermal threshold has been reached. 

It may also be an issue with your OS, in which case you could back up your data and use the restore disc to restore the system to its original system settings.

Please let me know if you have any further questions regarding this issue.

Sincerely,

Minh Tran

Applications Engineering
National Instruments

[calebyaj]

The system is running in Windows XP environment.

This lock ups occur during a long –running acquisition. There were two instances where the locks up happen within 1 hour of each other. 

I also notice the base of the chassis was quite warm. The chassis is mounted 2 inches above a panel inside the cabinet. I don’t know if this is enough space for ventilation.

Tong

[Minh T.]

Thanks for the reply Tong,

Has this acquisition been working fine previously?  It could be a memory issue with the LabVIEW code, i.e. building an array of data values which eventually is too large to be handled by the memory on the 8186.  Since this crash is not occuring when the controller is not executing it's long-running acquisition this is likely the problem.  It might be worthwhile to use one of the LabVIEW shipping examples for continuous acquisition and see if those crash as well.  If not, than it's most likely an issue with memory management in your LabVIEW code.

If you open up LabVIEW and go to Help > Find Examples > Hardware Input and Output > DAQmx > Analog Measurements > Voltage > Cont Acq&Graph Voltage-Int Clk.vi this is a nice simple example which definitely should not crash your controller even if it's running for long periods of time. 

If this shipping example also crashes your controller, it may be time to  try a complete restore of your controllers original factory settings.

Please let me know if you have any further questions regarding this issue.

Sincerely,
Minh Tran

Applications Engineering

National Instruments