What is the alternative solution for "Converting a Desktop PC to a Pharlap ETS Real-Time Target"?

[msad66]

Hi,

I read almost all white papers about "using desktop PCs as RT targets".

It seems that NI shut down Phar Lap soon, according to "Phar Lap RT OS EOL Road Map" (see the attached file).

Moreover, there are some comments on the white papers:

"The 2014+ hardware architectures have been tested and confirmed to work with LabVIEW 2018.. NI does not plan on testing new RT PC compatible hardware for future version of LabVIEW."

"National Instruments is not currently planning on supporting conversion of desktop PCs to NI Linux Real-Time targets. Conversion of desktop PCs to Phar Lap ETS targets is supported."

Since they are shutting down Phar Lap, my question is what is the alternative for that?

We have started several low cost projects, based on this feature (converting a desktop PC to RT target).

Using an NI hardware (like cRIO) is not affordable in these projects.

Is NI going to supporting conversion of desktop PCs to NI Linux Real-Time targets after shutting down Phar Lap or it is just an end to this very useful feature?

[rolfk]

Did you buy the according LabVIEW RT ETS licenses for your converted PCs? If you didn't you were actually in violation of the NI license requirements.

The impossibility to enforce the LabVIEW Realtime license cost for such targets is almost certainly one of the main contributing factors that they do not feel like supporting use of NI Linux Realtime on standard hardware.

But, but, Linux is open source you may say! Right and nobody is preventing you to take the NI Linux source code from their public repository and compile it for your own hardware. But that is just the Linux kernel and Linux binaries.

It does not contain the LabVIEW realtime runtime engine, NI-VISA, NI-DAQ and NI-this and NI-that software drivers which are all NI closed source software and where NI is free to define who can install it on what hardware. And they have of course a valid interest to receive some license revenues for that. When you buy a cRIO or similar target that license cost is already included in the hardware cost price. When you buy an OTS PC no license is paid for any of these softwares. 

[msad66 · Accepted solution]

Thanks rolfk for your quick answer.

I respectfully think that NI has chosen a wrong way.

If they want LabVIEW to be a popular programming language, they should avoid this kind of decisions.

MATLAB has "Simulink Desktop Real-Time" and does not force users to just use their hardware:

https://www.mathworks.com/hardware-support/simulink-desktop-real-time.html

I think there is going to be a migration to other programming languages like MATLAB.

[rolfk]

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@msad66 wrote:

MATLAB has "Simulink Desktop Real-Time" and does not force users to just use their hardware:

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Which would seem hard to do, as Matlab does not sell any hardware as far as I can tell. Their business model is considerably diifferent as they are basically a complete software shop only.

Also while many of the LabVIEW users would love if the LabVIEW language was a more official language that would be thought in basic school as a standard programming language, NI until recently didn't feel very much like that. For NI LabVIEW was for a long time an enabling product to sell their hardware, and not a product to make money in its own.

I guess the making money in its own hasn't changed very much but watch the NI website for the new LabVIEW Community Edition to be released. This will be a serious game changer in many ways as that will make LabVIEW for non-commercial use (yes it won't help your realtime converted PCs at all as you can't use that Release for anything that you intend to sell, as product or as service) but it will allow hobby use and use for learning LabVIEW without any license cost.