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NI PXI/PXIe/DAQmx compatibility with Keysight chassis/controller

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Chassis: Keysight M9010A
Controller: Keysight M9036A, Windows 7, Keysight Connection Expert 2018, DAQmx version 15.5

Cards: NI PXI-6509(x2), NI PXIe-4303(x3), NI PXIe-6739(x2)

Host PC: standard Windows 7 PC, DAQmx version 15.5

Host PC and Controller connected over dedicated NICs

 

Desire is for software on host PC to access PXI(e) cards "through" controller.

 

Is this a supported configuration?

 

NI MAX can see PXI(e) cards from controller but not from host.  NI MAX doesn't appear to see chassis from either.

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Brianlawry72,

 

I believe everything that you are seeing is expected behavior.

 

DAQmx is only compatible with NI hardware, so the chassis itself would not show up on MAX. Do be aware that this means you likely don't have access to any of the backplane traces or clocks in the chassis - unless it is an NI chassis, it may be very difficult to communicate between cards.

 

A controller is more similar to a PC than it is to a PXI card. If the controller and host pc are connected via NIC, you could think of these as two separate computers on the same network. This means the host PC will not have access to the hardware hooked up to the controller. There are two solutions to this: you could use a PXI Remote Control module and a MXI cable going to the host PC. This would actually make the host PC the controller for the chassis and cut out the current controller altogether. Alternately, you could run LabVIEW programs on both the host and the controller and communicate data between them via TCP/IP, a web server, etc.

 

VanCamp

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Solution
Accepted by topic author brianlawry72

VanCamp,

First off, we removed the host PC from the system so access from outside the PXI chassis is no longer an issue.  The embedded PC/PXI controller is now the master for all PXI, LXI, GPIB, and USB instrumentation.

 

It turns out the problem was a corrupt Keysight driver on the embedded PC/controller.  Once that issue was resolved, NI MAX does see the chassis.  We don't need access to any of the chassis functionality--it's just a place for the cards to be.

 

We are limited to C# software running through the DAQmx libraries for this project so something akin to an I/O Server isn't an option (and isn't needed now that only have the one PC).

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