What LabVIEW licenses to purchase?

[KMC123]

Hey everyone!

I am trying to decide what licenses / packages to purchase. My organization has (2) developers with seats needed at their desks and (8) production test-sets needing the capability to develop and debug as needed. What do I need to purchase in order to stay on the good side of NI / EMERSON?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[RTSLVU]

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@KMC123 wrote:

Hey everyone!

I am trying to decide what licenses / packages to purchase. My organization has (2) developers with seats needed at their desks and (8) production test-sets needing the capability to develop and debug as needed. What do I need to purchase in order to stay on the good side of NI / EMERSON?

Thanks in advance for your help!

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It depends on what you mean by "production test-sets needing the capability to develop and debug as needed".

If you expect the end user on the production test to also be developing code then you will need a licence for every station.

But if you expect your two developers to develop on their computer and deploy executables to the production test stations then you only need two licences. 

I recommend your two developers have laptops so they can connect to the production test system to debug and develop as needed.   

[KMC123]

Could I get 4 licenses and enable (2) of the licenses on the production floor as needed?  

[KMC123]

Does anyone know the minimum number of LabVIEW licenses on a VLM account? It is not clear on the "Understanding NI Software Policies" or "Getting Started With NI Volume License Manager".

Not getting much help from my NI reseller........

[_Bryan]

https://www.ni.com/en/shop/services/software/software-license-programs/volume-license-program.html 

 The Volume License Program (VLP) maximizes your investment as your company expands its use of NI software. Designed for small groups, sites, or organizations with more than 5 licenses, VLP helps you manage and optimize the use of your software.

I have found Google to be much better than the NI search.....

[Kevin_Price]

If you need the ability to do minor debug & troubleshooting work using source code on your production systems, you may want to inquire about having 2 regular development licenses and 1 or 2 "debug / deployment" licenses.  Debug/deploy licenses allow you to do bug fixes and troubleshooting on your production systems, but are not meant for development of new features.

-Kevin P

[KMC123]

So, if I chose the two Professional Development licenses of LabVIEW what are the cost the Debug and Deploy licenses at current market value?

[BertMcMahan]

Do you actually need to develop on the production workstations? If you just need to debug there, you can do that without a special license. You can debug executables remotely from your development machine.

For example: I have a license on my laptop, and we have maybe a dozen "production" machines running executables that I built on my computer. I only need one license for that. The other machines can only run executables, but if I need to I can "remote in" to the executable and debug it that way. It's not perfect but it's pretty good. I can also just bring my laptop out there and plug it into the machines to do testing.

If you want the operators to do the debugging, i.e., changing LabVIEW source code, then you'll need some sort of debug/deploy or volume license.

[_Bryan]

I think the debug license was $1 more than the Development LabVIEW license.  The debug license is also perpetual, so you don't have to pay for it every year.

The only reason we went to 2023Q3 is because we are moving older machines to Win 11.  So we purchased 1 development license to convert everything to 2023Q3 and make executables during the 1 year.  And then I can maintain everything with a debug license until we need to upgrade LabVIEW again since it was built with the development license.

[Rant]

But I think we are also going to start using more PLC's and only use LabVIEW when necessary, unless NI/Emerson decide to go back to the perpetual licenses.

[End Rant]

[KMC123]

So, if I am understanding correctly, the debug license can "see" the LabVIEW code that is on test station executable which was created on a development computer somewhere else.  Where is the debug license installed?

Sorry for my ignorance!