FPGA and Scan Mode Hybrid with EtherCAT

[charmand79]

Hi all,

I am having some problems in running my setup using both FPGA and Scan Engine.. More specifically, what I have is a cRIO 9074 controller/chassis communicating with two NI 9144 cRIOs via ethercat. Each of the three cRIOs has several scan interface modules and one FPGA (NI 9478) module. My 9074 controller is set to FPGA mode. I have successfully compiled the FPGA code and created the bitfiles on all three cRIOs.

When I try to run my test VI (screenshot attached) I got:

a) The first time I got an error message saying: The target does not support interactive execution nor programmatic FPGA interface communication. 

b) After that, each time I am running it I fail to deploy it as it says that the caller VI (the one attached) could not be downloaded...

c) Finally, when I got rid of all FPGA stuff in my VI just to see if scan engine alone works OK (first, changed 9074 from FPGA to Scan) the VI runs but moments after 9074 controller disconnects...

I presume that the error message about the target not being able to support FPGA refers to the 9144 cRIOs.. Is there a particular setting that I have to change so that the two ethercat connected 9144 cRIOs can run in hybrid mode?

Finally, note that the simple solution of running all my FPGAs in my 9074 controller and having the two 9144s running scan engine only is not possible as the 9074 has not got enough flops for my application..

Thanks for your time,

harry 

[jkurtw]

Hi harry,

The first error you mention is definitely associated with the 9144 chassis.

Are you trying to use the FPGA Host Interface to read/write the front panel controls/indicators of the FPGA VI on the 9144? This is not possible and should produce the error you are seeing. You have to communicate with the 9144 FPGA VI using user-defined I/O variables, by right-clicking on the chassis and selecting New » User-defined variable.   

Section 3 of the CompactRIO Developers Guide discusses this. 

For the other errors, if you are using LabVIEW 2009, there was a bug that is fixed with the SP1 update. If you can't update, then there are work arounds in the KB.

Hope this helps.

[charmand79]

Kurt,

thanks a lot for the reply.. I can confirm that updating to Labview 2009 SP1 solved the "failed to download" and disconnection problems.

I have now removed the cRIO 9144 from the project temporarily and focused attention on trying to run my FPGA-Scan Engine hybrid VI solely on the 9074. I will follow your user-defined variable solution later

My problem now seems to be that the VI stucks at the Open FPGA reference part.. I mean it never proceeds through that point. I am pretty confident that I have followed all necessary steps (FPGA compilation, download bitfile to RIO). My open fpga reference directs to the bitfile created.

I ll try a few more different combinations using invoke methods reset/run etc and see how it goes. However, if anyone has a suggestion on what the problem could be here, please let me know..

Regards,

Harry