Can I use a NI-PXIe8820 real-time OS embedded PC to set up a target PC for using with Simulink Real-Time?

[ntsinhtb11]

I have a Simulink Real-Time model that was built on my laptop PC installed MatlabR2015b! This model ran well on a desktop target PC (Pentum® Dual-Core E5300@2.6Ghz). Now, for some private reasons, I have to take place the desktop target PC with a NI-PXIe8820 real-time OS embedded PC of the National Instruments Company to do some real-time simulations and experiments! It is possible or not if I build the new real-time simulation system with this NI device and my laptop that still using Simulink Real-Time, and I have to do what for building this system. If it is impossible, what I should do to establish a real-time control system with my laptop and the NI-PXIe8820 real-time OS embedded PC. Is it the best way for me to use a Labview software with Labview Real-Time Module or VeriStand to replace the Matlab and Simulink Real-Time. I've never use Labview and so on. If I want to use the Labview software, how i must do to use the Simulink model that was built previously to connect and reuse with the Labview platform. Thank to all of you!

[AndyClegg · Accepted solution]

I'll hopefully give you some general ideas from my experience, but not specific to your target which I don't have any experience with:

1. Convert the Simulink model into native LabVIEW code that can be run real time ? It may be that your lack of experience with LV is putting you off this, or it may be that you need to work with the real-time model rather than it being something that would be a one off conversion, or it may be a very complex model that may make this impractical. If the model is simple or uses a simple solver (Euler) then it can be quite straightforward to re-implement directly in LV, otherwise LabVIEWs CD&SIM add-on mimics a lot of the functionality of SImulink. The Simulation Interface Toolkit used to be able to import Simulink models into CD&SIM, but that is obsolete now.
2. Can you compile the Simulink model into a portable format that you can then run within a simpler real-time LV application running on the NI PXIe8820 ? This might require a bit of initial effort to set up the wrapper application, ensure the real-time aspects are handled correctly and deployment process, but there are NI Alliance Partners who would be able to help.
3. There is a third party product by LHP called Pantera which is used to directly target Simulink models down to various NI real time targets (https://lhpes.com/panthera) - there is a little bit of LV programming needed but more of a configuration process to match the hardware than anything serious. I am not sure if your PXI embedded PC is compatible, but when I last looked at it is worked with PXI and cRIO targets that have RT Linux operating systems. When we used it as part of an evaluation it worked quite nicely.
4. Veristand is the other option - as you suggest. There is a tool called Model Interface Toolkit that allows you to import models from other simulation environments, including Simulink. I am sure there will be some caveats / limitations on what models it can convert and you do need to have quite a lot of tools to make this work (Simulink Coder, Veristand, Model Interface Toolkit, LV and LV RT).

I hope this helps,

Andy