Need to Install Labview App on cFP2200 with plug and play capability for measurement modules

[kgolden]

Hi,

I'm trying to install some monitoring software on cFP2200 devices. This software uses anywhere from 1 to 8 AI-102 modules. I want to be able to deploy my build to the fieldpoint without having to know ahead of time how many modules will be there.

My initial scheme for doing this was to design my app to assume all AI-102 modules were available to read from, throwing an error which I catch and remove if they were not. This worked just fine in interpreted code testing. I was able to unplug the field point, move AI-102 devices to different slots than before, and my software could find them and ignore the slots where no AI-102s were plugged in.

An issue has now arisen when I try to deploy a compiled build of this app to the fieldpoint. When I do this, I get a "conflict resolution" pop up which lists all AI-102s which are not plugged in at the time of deployment. I have to choose "cancel deployment" or "skip deployment" in these cases. I am then unable to find AI-102 modules if I move them to a slot other than where they were plugged at install or put new ones in.

We are going to be putting these modules at customer sites and we want the ability to expand them to contain more or fewer AI-102 as the the customer's systems expand and contract. Under the current situation, I would have to manually re-install the software each time they move a module, which is not really an acceptable long term solution.

Are there any ideas on how to approach this? 

Thanks,

Kelsey Golden

[Wayne.C]

Have you tried populating all 8 slots with AI-102 modules just for the deployment phase?

[kgolden]

While that might work, it would be pretty expensive. This is because we'd basically need to keep 8 AI-102s on hand just to do our installations. These devices aren't cheap so it's a cost I would prefer to avoid.

I was hoping there would be a more general way to do it where I could deploy to a module that's completely empty if I needed to. This would be ideal in cases where we have to replace the 2200 controller but the AI-102s are still good. In that type of situation, rather than unplugging all of the inputs, we could just unplug the backplane and the 2200 and swap it out. 

[kgolden · Accepted solution]

I just figured out that the "conflict resolution" window doesn't really mean anything. So long as I select "skip", I can still move modules around or install new ones! It makes me wonder what the purpose of the conflict resolution is in the first place if it doesn't actually stop me from using the modules later.

For anyone wanting plug and play in the future, my solution to basically try to read from all possible addresses and ignore those throwing errors basically seems to be the way to achieve it. Just ignore the silly conflict resolution window. I sure hope that the fact I can still install modules in the slots where conflict resolution implied it wasn't installing them is not a defect that NI will patch out later.