USB DAQ 6501 distribution

[stc100]

Now that my development based on the USB 6501 is completed, I am searching how to deploy the runtime application on different machines each equipped with a OEM 6501 and some of my hardware. The deployment of the USB 6501 is giving me headaches. I've included the 2 required assemblies into the GAC, (NationalInstruments.common and NationalInstruments.daqmx) and included the required dll into the system path (NationalInstruments.common.dll and .xml  and NationalInstruments.DAQMX.dll and .xml)

I am still missing some runtime dll as well as the USB 6501 driver.

I don't want to install the 400mb from the CD into the runtime machines, and I don't see into the documentation the information I need.

Question1: Where is the USB 6501 driver is to be found? (On the CD... but where ?)

Question2: What runtime Dll do I have to include (Of course this wil depends of the functions used, but where are they anyway ?)

Thank's for your support.

Thierry

[Dennis_Knutson]

The answer is the same as the first time you asked the question.

Message Edited by Dennis Knutson on 07-03-2006 09:01 AM

[stc100]

The reason to ask the same question again is that I am not satisfied with the answer. Installing 400mb+ of software to deploy a few kb of drivers and dll is not an acceptable solution...

[Dennis_Knutson]

Unfortunately, it's the only solution that NI gives you. As I said in the prvious post, this question has come up numerous times. NI has a prdouct suggestion page that you can go to and make requests. They do listen to them.

[reddog]

For a deployed application using DAQmx, DAQmx must be installed on the target machine.  Since DAQmx provides driver support for numerous NI products, the packaging isn't always as straight forward as it might seem (it's not as simple as copying one or two binaries into the system directory).  To remove this burden of packaging complexity, NI recommends using an installer built by NI for deploying DAQmx support along with your application. 

With that said, there are some options for making the NI installer provided in your software distribution smaller.  You didn't mention which ADE you're using, but LabVIEW, Measurement Studio, and CVI all provide similar mechanisms for building a custom NI installer.  Since I'm most familiar with LabVIEW, I'll explain how it's done in LabVIEW with hopes it will provide enough hints for building it in CVI and Measurement Studio if you're using one of those environments instead.  For LabVIEW, it requires the use of LabVIEW 8.0 and you must be using a project.  From the project window, right click on the Build Specifications icon and select New->Installer from the menu.  In the category pane of the window that pops up, highlight Additional Installers.  You should now see a list of National Instruments installers that you can combine into a single installer for deployment purposes.  In addition, you should also see an Install Type pull down menu which has installer specific packaging options.  With DAQmx 8.1, you have options for Full, Runtime, Runtime2, and Runtime3.  The various flavors give you options for deploying DAQmx without ADE support (only required for development purposes), without the DAQ Assistant, and without documentation.  With these flavors of DAQmx you should be able to reduce the footprint by approximately half.  Even with this reduced size, I realize that for many applications this may still seem excessive.  NI is continuing to investigate smaller packaging and deployment options and will provide new options in subsequent DAQmx releases as they become available.  In the mean time, if you have any questions on the existing packaging options, please post back. 

[stc100]

Thanks for your answer. Unfortunaltly, this doesn't help.

The devellopment is based under Microsoft Dev Studio, and it doesn't look like some NI installers are available at this level.

Buying the USB6501, the idea was to deploy into some c# Visual Studio application, I/O control based with the 6501 hardware controled by some NI-DAQmx librairies. In this approach, Labview, CVI and measurement studio are not even installed in the devellopment machines. Only the Ni-DAQmx functions required are called from the Visual Studio dev project to control the hardware when it is needed. Once the project is done, only 2 things should be added to the distribution products: USB6501 Driver and Ni-DAQmx librairies, everything else is unnecessary for the customer. Unfortunatly, as It was said earlier, no driver is to be found on the CD, and the NationalInstruments.common.dll and .xml  and NationalInstruments.DAQMX.dll and .xml are far from being sufficient. 

[jeroen94704]

On the off-chance that anyone is still watching this thread, I was wondering if there's been any progress in this area? We're facing the same problem: Our users need to install a huge 450 MB package, which includes software and documentation they don't need, in order for a 5 MB application to function at all.

[Tom_W_[DE]]

Hi jeroen-

Which development environment are you using to create your software?  As reddog mentioned, there are now options to deploy reduced NI-DAQmx installations to deployment targets.  Choosing the correct strategy will depend on the requirements of your built application.

Specifically, these questions are important:

1. Which ADE is being used?  The most convenient method is available via NI LabVIEW 8.x, NI CVI 8.x.
2. Do you use the DAQ Assistant or LabVIEW Real-Time in your application?
3. Does your software rely on device configuration via MAX (i.e. do you hard-code device names in your code, etc)?

Thanks-

[jeroen94704]

Hello Tom,

Thanks for your reply.

1. Our software is developed using the .NET 2.0 framework. We don't use LabView or CVI to develop our applications, but write our code in C++/CLI in MS Visual Studio.
2. No, we don't use DAQ Assistant or LabView RT
3. No, we don't use MAX.

Concerning 2 and 3, note that I'm not aware of us using the things you mention, but is it possible they are invoked under water by the .NET API?

Is this the information you were looking for? If you need anything else to help me, please let me know.

Regards,

Jeroen Bouwens

[Tom_W_[DE]]

Hi Jeroen-

Yes, this info is helpful.  One of the DAQmx Runtime versions should be able to reduce the installer size significantly for your application.  We plan to post those to the web soon, but in the meantime please contact support via email and they should be able to supply a standalone installer for your app.  I will post back to this thread when the web downloads are available.

Thanks-