Keeping Custom Devices in Sync on Different Systems

[User002]

I am managing 10+ separate systems around the world running Veristand as the test software. The systems are mostly mostly duplicates but with some slight differences (hardware versions, checksums on communications, etc.). 

In principle, the architecture of Veristand is set up so that all of those differences should be able to be kept in the System Definition. This means that my Custom Devices need to support all possible configurations on every machine and then the System definition would tell it which one to use.

As I am updating the custom devices, is there any way anyone has found to easily push those custom devices to all the PCs? The system definition is easy to deal with because I can keep those in a central location and have each PC read its own sysdef from that shared location, but the Custom devices need to be in the specific folder on each machine to work.

Anyone have any tools or ideas for keeping custom devices in sync (code wise) on various systems?

[Salazar.Slytherin · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure of a way to do this natively from VeriStand but you could keep the custom devices in a central location and programmatically place files into the needed Windows folder through the command prompt.

You can also programmatically add the custom device each time as mentioned in the following forum post

(Programmatically adding VS custom device)

https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-VeriStand/Programmatically-adding-VS-custom-device/td-p/2291206

[Eric.M]

The PCs running VeriStand must be aware of the GUIDs you are going to use for the different flavours of your custom device. If you have a XML file that describe those, you should be fine.

If you're looking to dynamically change the RT engine part of your Custom Device based on some configuration in the definition file, you can achieve that with a function in the Custom Devices LabVIEW palette (can't remember the exact name - should something like "Set RT Driver VI.vi"). That will allow for one host configuration.llb to call into N potential engine.llb's (or RT Driver.vi's).

--Eric