Sam Dexter

Thank you guys. Yes, sorry, it works. I just kept trying to install ni-labview-2025-pro while I downloaded the community edition. My bad.

Yes, followed it to a letter. There is no natinst in usr/local.

Wonder if anyone can tell me where to get an ISO file for Linux LabVIEW and, maybe, give a few pointers on how to install it, exactly. I've tried to download it from the NI website but the "Offline Install" does not work at all and the on-line installer does something that I do not quite understand. After all, I cannot find LabVIEW on my computer. Any suggestions? log.txt update.txt list.txt upgrade.txt

Thank you Michael. Good point. Yes, I've noticed the dynamic approach here and there as well as using SoftMotion with EtherCAT but had no chance to dive in yet. I will take a look at the other methods later this year when we start working with ELMO (Platinum) drives.

This is by no means a full EtherCAT tutorial but, rather, introductory notes. Please, feel free to add to this post, expend and/or correct any mistakes and information.

A peculiar thing about the EtherCAT slaves is that you must have an ESI (EtherCAT Slave Information) file for your slave. This is an XML file that describes the EtherCAT specifics and application specific features of the device. Those are available form the device manufacturer's site, e.g. https://new.abb.com/drives/connectivity/fieldbus-connectivity/ethercat/ethercat-feca-01. If you cannot get an OEM's XML file for your device, you can (theoretically, I've never done it myself) edit one of the existing files (or create a new one) either manually or with a help of special ESI Editors (cost money and, usually, manufacturer-specific). E.g. https://github.com/CopleyControlsOfficial/EtherCAT-ESI-File-Examples.

Setting up the project:

NI article: https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YHbbCAG&l=en-CA

So, what I dug up so far: 1. Many compactRIO can be set up as an EtherCAT master. You don't need any special hardware for that. In fact, even your laptop Ethernet port can be turned into an EtherCAT master with the proper set of drivers (not covered in this post). Nevertheless, check if your chassis supports EtherCAT mode - go to https://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/374786m.html and see if it listed under Supported EtherCAT Masters. 2. Download EtherCAT drivers here - https://www.ni.com/en/support/downloads/drivers/download.ni-industrial-communications-for-ethercat.html#485587. First, check your LabVIEW compatibility with the EtherCAT drivers here - https://www.ni.com/en/support/documentation/compatibility/17/ni-industrial-communications-for-ethercat-and-labview-compatibil.html. Install the drivers to compactRIO under Custom Software Installation. Configure one of the Ethernet ports as EtherCAT master.

We've just got an ABB EtherCAT communication module for ACS880 - FECA-01 and were absolutely sure we won't have any problems creating a LabVIEW control application for it. However, we got stuck from the very beginning. We found practically no examples or instructions on how to create an EtherCAT application from scratch. There are a few examples, mostly related to setting up a project with NI-9144 or similar, but nothing for a custom EtherCAT slave device. I am curious if anyone could provide me with any pointers as to how to set up a project for FECA-01 or point me in the right direction. Thank you in advance.

Dear colleagues and Dr. Powell (hopefully), We've been developing a pretty large project (17 actors) with the Messenger Library for the past few months - great tool and serves our purposes well, however, when we deployed it on cRIO NI-9042 and ran a long-term test, we noticed a slow but steady CPU load increase over time. Enough that with all actors, it will crash the system overnight. It seems that each actor contributes to this, which suggests it is an issue common to the framework Possibly related more to self-addressed messages (how the Messenger Library does periodic actions) than messages between actors Early testing suggests that using timed loops and queues does ‘not’ have this issue General Testing procedure: Run actors with configurations as described here and noted in the title of each plot Have SystemMonitor actor log the average CPU usage and Free Memory over time Plot those values Note that the dX/dt values are just taking the max/min values of each series and plotting the change over time. So it’s just an approximation. Limitations: We do always have the logger writing to the file system. Based on the Test 4 conclusions, I ‘think’ this would not be the core of any problems. Test 1: Just for developing my plotting script Test 2: Pretty minimal-actor test with GUI Showed usage going up over time Test 3: Repeat of test 2, but without the GUI Still showed usage going up over time, though a little bit slower Conclusion: usage is not some bug within the GUI actor Test 4: Run test with all actors Saw usage go up much faster Conclusion: There muse be some CPU increase for each Actor. Which means it is ‘maybe’ not a bug introduced into any single actor, but something common to them all Test 5: Run with all actors, with their ‘read’ rates doubled This would mean that actors would try to read any devices more often, and would involve more self-addressed messages In most cases, this should ‘not’ have increased the amount of messages sent between actors CPU usage went up much faster Conclusion: CPU usage tied to message passing Test 6: Run all actors, with ‘read’ rates restored to normal (hopefully; it’s possible I missed some), but ‘publish’ rates doubled This ‘publish’ rate is for the ‘state’ messages each actor sends to the GUI for display CPU usage went up about the same as in test 4 Conclusion: messages addressed to other actors didn’t seem to increase CPU usage Test 7: Cut out the main body of the Logger and SystemMonitor actors, and run them within timed loops (ie: no Messenger Library) Repeat of test 2, though it’s possible the CPU usage comes from part of the default Messenger Library template that I did not copy Using Queues to pass data from the read loops to GUI updates, so we still have data passing Running the loops at 10x of the main ‘read’ rate for these actors. This will also mean about 10x GUI updates. Status: I ran this over the weekend. When I came back in on Monday, the CPU usage seemed to still be steady at 0.20% I made a mistake in how the logging was set up so don’t have the logs for this I’m re-running the test now. Judging from the Test 2, a few hours should be enough to see an increase Early Possible Conclusion: seeing the CPU not go up over the weekend makes me think this is indeed an issue within the Messenger Library I am looking for any information that can shed light on high CPU load with Messenger Library and possible suggestions on how to mitigate the problem. I hope, you guys can share your thoughts and ideas, and steer me in the right direction. At this point we are too far in the project and have very little time to start over. Please help! Thank you in advance.

Hmm... Interesting observation. Well, it seemed at the time that the Network Variables was a dirt and simple way of passing the data over the network. If not the Network Shared Variables how would you pass the data on the network? Streams? Another comms interface?

The problem resolved. And not the way I expected. While we were thinking and searching for a solution, our techs decided to try another unit, off the shelf. They loaded everything as usual and everything worked out of the box - no fuss , no muss... The offending unit is being shipped to the office for a forensic investigation and I am breaking my head trying to imagine what in the hardware could cause the problem we've seen? My guess is that it could be only the memory. The network itself was working fine so there is no problem with the transport layer. It's gotta be memory, what else?

Hi Jordan, Thank you. No, I am not doing anything extra as everything started to work for me right from the beginning so it is only basic reads and writes.

Had a great success with Network Published Shared Variables from the get-go. Used them on a large project sharing data between multiple devices on the network - worked great. Until one day (yesterday), when they stopped. No change in the code, the same base was running for 4 years on multiple systems (NI-9042 cRIO + NI-9147 eRIO). Yesterday, loaded the code on a brand new cRIO and ooh-la-la - surprise. No more data sharing. Only on a new platform. Loaded the same code on the old one - everything works. Modified the code to make data sharing more transparent for troubleshooting. No, there is no data coming to the consumers. Not sure though whether it is writing to the shared variable or reading from it but the fact is no more data. At this point I am totally baffled to what could possibly happen. Checked the drivers - the Network Variable Engine 17.0 is installed. Although, I am not sure how to check if it is running. I tried to use Linux tools in CLI but didn't see any process name resembling the Network Variables Engine. I wonder if anybody had similar experience or can suggest where to look? Maybe I am overlooking some weird settings somewhere? Like blocked ports or network registration... However, I couldn't find anything, no matter how hard I looked. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Thank you guys. As far as the virtual keyboard goes, found this thread - https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-Linux-Real-Time-Documents/Florence-Virtual-Keyboard/ta-p/3528048. The issue with the SystemExec VI is still in the works. Will let you know once I have a chance to try your suggestions out.

The task is simple - call Florence virtual keyboard on a CompactRIO programmatically but I must be overlooking something as I cannot get it to work... I have Florence installed with opkg and I also made a little bash script to call it. When I execute it from CompactRIO terminal - everything works but if I try to call the script from my application using SytemExec VI - I get the echo output from my script and the error code is 0 but the virtual keyboard does not start. Seems like a trivial problem but I am stuck here... Can someone explain to me what I've done wrong here and/or, maybe, suggest a better way of doing it, please?

I could understand paying for support when you need support. But if you only need to download files?.. Plus not just some files but the files you've already paid for. This is nonsense. At the very least they could've provided the files when we contacted the support instead of bouncing us from one rep to another. Thank you everybody for all your suggestions. I've searched all the ftp sites I could possibly find but, unfortunately, no luck. There is some stuff there, no doubt, but highly disorganized and not what we need. Most of the stuff goes up to 2014 anyways and then nothing... Very frustrating. Don't know what else we can do. I wonder if I can use the Community Edition? Does anyone know if Community Edition has a Real Time module and FPGA support?

... to provide us with an upgrade to our software which we bought back in 2017. And this is going on for more than a year now. The story is simple - our company bought a license for NI EMBEDDED CONTROL AND MONITORING SOFTWARE SUITE, USB, SPR17, Rev 007, 2017.06.07 and we successfully downloaded the SP1 upgrade later on. The next year we bought a subscription to LabView 2018 but did not renew it for 2019 and went back to using 2017. Meanwhile our downloaded SP1 files gone missing. "No problem" - we thought - "We'll just go to the NI website and download our SP1." https://www.ni.com/en-ca/support/downloads/software-products/download.embedded-control-and-monitoring-software-suite.html#306390 Not that fast! To download previous versions of LabView you need an active subscription. OK... So, how do you get missing pieces for your software you have a license for if you do not have an active subscription? We contacted NI and their representative Newark and asked them for help... Long story short - we are still waiting for a resolution. Meanwhile, I see no other option but to ask the community for help if NI is so ignorant. Maybe some of the members can share their LabView 2017 SP1 installation files? I don't think it will be a copyright violation or something - what can you do with it without the license? In any case, I would greatly appreciate any input and, maybe, perhaps an advise or a comment. https://www.ni.com/en-ca/shop/software/products/embedded-control-and-monitoring-software-suite.html We are looking for: 1. LabView2017SP1-WinEng 2. 2017SP1RealTime-WinEng 3. 2017SP1FPGAModule-WinEng 4. 2017SP1XILINXCompilationTools Best Regards.

OK, found where to configure the CAN module, silly me, and everything started to work - right click on the module in the project, go the properties and set up baud rate there. Also, NI-9853 works well in either configuration whether installed in cRIO or the expansion chassis. It appears that NI-CAN is not required for NI-9853 operation. I assume it is all handled in NI-RIO.

Well, unfortunately, with COVID and stuff it is really hard to procure extra hardware, so we are stuck with the cRIO-9039 and we have to use NI-9853 with NI-9147 Ethernet expansion chassis to control industrial hydraulic driver that talks only hardcoded J1939. I have tried to use multiple examples (including C:\Program Files (x86)\National Instruments\LabVIEW 2018\examples\CompactRIO\Module Specific\NI 985x) but regardless where the CAN module installed (cRIO or expansion) I am not reading anything (although everything compiles nicely and there are no errors). In the example code, such as cRIO CAN Basic, they use FPGA I/O node to read the data but there is no any kind of the module configuration done prior to that. How is CAN module configured? Through NI-MAX? But the module does not appear in NI-MAX... Does it require NI-CAN? Or I/O node handler is a part of NI-RIO?

Hi guys, I really need some help to kick off J1939 CAN interface development on NI-9853 FPGA. There are some CANopen examples on the internet but nothing for J1939 and I don't even know where to start. What makes life even more difficult is that the CAN module is residing on the Ethernet expansion chassis NI-9147. If anyone could give me something to start with that would be absolutely fantastic. Thank you in advance.

Now, of course, the trick is to do it without ActiveX control using raw HTTP as compactRIO does not have support for ActiveX. Any suggestions? NI-IMAQ cannot access other channels but channel one...

Hi guys, A newbie question - say, I have a compactRIO running Linux Real-Time system and it runs my .rtexe set as startup at the boot. I wonder if there is a way to execute this .rtexe arbitrarily from CLI or by any other means, so you can actually have a few .rtexe on the system and pick and choose which ones to run at will?

The solution is simple - use http:/IPaddress/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1 or 2 or 3 or 4...