Programmatic control of standby mode

[Cat]

Hi all (no, I'm not really retired yet, lol),

My latest toy is an IC-3173.  I need to be able to programmatically (LV, of course) put it into a reduced power state (analogous to Windows standby/hibernate/sleep).  And then "wake it up" every hour for 10 minutes. 

I'm running LinuxRT.  Does it even have a concept of standby/hibernate/sleep?

Cat

[hooovahh]

Not that I know of.  I'm not sure if this is an option for you or not, but you could completely shutdown the LinuxRT device, then have power removed, then reapply power.  I believe the bios of these controllers allow for wake on power being provided, and your app can be ran on startup.  So maybe have some kind of external device work like a watch dog.  While your program is running keep hitting the watchdog, then when your program shuts down the timer starts counting down, removes power, waits a second, then applies power again.  Just a thought and probably not a great solution, and someone with more Linux experience may have better suggestions.

[ShaunR]

The Linux Kernel does support them but of course they are not called that. The Kernel has to be compiled with the features and I don't know for that device.

Check what is available (if at all) by issuing "cat /sys/power/state" in a command prompt. Check how it can be woken up by issuing "cat /proc/acpi/wakeup"

[Cat]

hooovahh -- what you're talking about is one of our options.  

Shaun -- we hunted around and those commands don't seem to be available on LinuxRT

On top of the "standby" issue, after much back and forth with NI, we discovered that the system drive in the IC isn't removable.  And it can't be encrypted.  While we probably could have worked around the former, the latter is a show-stopper for our user.

So, looks like we're ditching the NI "Industrial Controller" and going to someone else's "Industrial Computer".  Plain jane Windows 10, 2 removeable drive slots, all of which will make life much easier.  Not to mention we can buy 4 of them for the price of one IC-3173.  🙄 

Thanks for the responses, guys!

[hooovahh]

A seemly highly specialized piece of equipment can usually justify the price.  But not meeting your needs and costing that much seems crazy.  It gets me wondering if there are products NI offers that over the life of the product never sell a single unit. 

Years ago I was in a hands on session with some PXI card NI was selling that allowed for taking many temperature readings, by using fiber optics.  Something like the fiber optic had microscopic cuts in it that allowed for taking many channels of temperature reading, like on the order of 100s.  I looked up the card and I can't remember the price but I thought it was like $20k or something.  I figured no one would use this but looking online it seems people did, but it has now since been obsolete. 

[ShaunR]

1 hour ago, Cat said:

Shaun -- we hunted around and those commands don't seem to be available on LinuxRT

no cat for Cat?

They are just text files (sort of). If you don't have a file called "state" in "/sys/power/" then i guess you don't have those features

[JKSH]

7 hours ago, hooovahh said:

Years ago I was in a hands on session with some PXI card NI was selling that allowed for taking many temperature readings, by using fiber optics.  Something like the fiber optic had microscopic cuts in it that allowed for taking many channels of temperature reading, like on the order of 100s.  I looked up the card and I can't remember the price but I thought it was like $20k or something.  I figured no one would use this but looking online it seems people did, but it has now since been obsolete. 

That was the PXIe-4844, an optical sensor interrogator. It wasn't just for temperature -- the gratings (microscopic cuts) can measure strain too. It's useful for taking lots of measurements across a long distance with just a single cable (although it was more like ~15 sensors per fiber, not 100), in an intrinsically safe environment, and/or an electrically noisy environment (since the fiber is not affected by noise).

$20k was the price of a typical interrogator ~10 years ago. PXIe-4844 was obsoleted because NI exited the market. Other manufacturers are still in it; performance has gone up and price has gone down since then.

Edited April 14, 2021 by JKSH

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

On 4/15/2021 at 12:16 AM, JKSH said:

That was the PXIe-4844, an optical sensor interrogator. It wasn't just for temperature -- the gratings (microscopic cuts) can measure strain too. It's useful for taking lots of measurements across a long distance with just a single cable (although it was more like ~15 sensors per fiber, not 100), in an intrinsically safe environment, and/or an electrically noisy environment (since the fiber is not affected by noise).

$20k was the price of a typical interrogator ~10 years ago. PXIe-4844 was obsoleted because NI exited the market. Other manufacturers are still in it; performance has gone up and price has gone down since then.

There are many companies offering technologies that are based on optical fiber sensors. One I have helped in the past was FBGS in Belgium, with this software https://fbgs.com/components/illumisense-software/ .