Some questions on veristand

[Lysandros]

Hello together,

after recently switching to Windows 10 and Labview 2018, our Hardware-in-the-Loop project is now to be moved to Veristand. Some general questions arised:

• When discovering PXI hardware in the System Explorer of Veristand, most modules are correctly found. However, the PXI-8430 card (serial) and NI-9145 chassis (Ethercat expansion) are not, likely because they are not natively supported. Do I need to resort to the Add-on from GitHub? Is there no official NI driver available?
• It is a known issue, that generating .dll-Files from Simulink can be problematic, due to the C-compilers missing (workaround includes installing&deinstalling Windows SDK...). Does anybody have experience on this on Windows 10/ Veristand 2018? Is there another way to import Simulink models to Veristand?
• In Labview, a state maching architecture was implemented, enabling controlled transition from one state to another (initialize, test, idle, stop, et.c.). Is Veristand suitable for this kind of programs?

Thanks & best regards

Lysandros

[blackburnite · Accepted solution]

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When discovering PXI hardware in the System Explorer of Veristand, most modules are correctly found. However, the PXI-8430 card (serial) and NI-9145 chassis (Ethercat expansion) are not, likely because they are not natively supported. Do I need to resort to the Add-on from GitHub? Is there no official NI driver available?

You are correct in assuming that these do not show up because they are not natively supported.There is no official NI driver in the sense that there isn't a downloadable EXE that will install an add-on similar to how you might install, for example, the LabVIEW RT add-on.

The "official" NI list of add-ons is here http://www.ni.com/product-documentation/52575/en/

One of the NI supported ones, is for EtherCAT expansion which I'm assuming is what you are referring to since that is hosted on NIs GitHub.  That is the one you'd want to use.

for the PXI-8430, if you can't find an add-on for that on the NI list, you could check the community add-ons at https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-VeriStand-Add-Ons-Documents/tkb-p/7321.  Someone might have developed one.

If not, you'll have to create a custom device which is a piece of LabVIEW code that you can plug in to VeriStand using a standard interface.  That is how most of these pre-developed add-ons are implemented.

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It is a known issue, that generating .dll-Files from Simulink can be problematic, due to the C-compilers missing (workaround includes installing&deinstalling Windows SDK...). Does anybody have experience on this on Windows 10/ Veristand 2018? Is there another way to import Simulink models to Veristand?

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I have not done this on Windows 10, as far as I know, the only way to directly import a Simulink model into VeriStand is as a DLL.

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In Labview, a state maching architecture was implemented, enabling controlled transition from one state to another (initialize, test, idle, stop, et.c.). Is Veristand suitable for this kind of programs?

VeriStand is commonly sequenced via the VeriStand gateway using TestStand or some other external sequencer.  Alternatively, you can create real-time sequences which execute directly on the target running VeriStand.  So rather than having a state machine with hard-coded test states, "Initialize" is defined in a sequence which tells VeriStand to "set these outputs to X" and so on for other test states.

If you wanted to implement a LabVIEW state machine in VeriStand though, you could do so as a custom device.