During 2011 I made a comparison between using Compact FieldPoint hardware and cRIO hardware in LabVIEW. Please note that I am only talking about cRIO Scan Mode here, not Real-Time use or FPGA use.Intially I was recomended by NI to switch from cFP to cRIO, but after some time of testing I had to conclude that cFP was the best alternative for my applications. Here's the negatives on cRIO in Scan mode that made me draw this conclusion;
-The subroutine to scan and detect all modules and signals present on a cRIO chassis contained a bug that
makes it malfunction when more than one ethernet port is available on the computer
-The option of setting and reading input range and similar configuration is not available in ordinary scan
mode or in real-time mode, it can only be set up with FPGA programming
-Distributed System Manager does not let the user set the signal configuration,
and is hence not a fullgood alternative to MAX
-Having to program the Watchdog functionality in real-time system of the cRIO chassis
is not as good an alternative as cFP where this system is built in in software
- NI gave me some tips about some "more advanced APIs" to handle the cRIO, but it
turned out to contain nothing really useful for me.
- Most changes and hardware configurations seems to be linked only within the LabVIEW project.
This means both that outside access is very limited, and that changes in hardware means recompiling and new versions.
Could be this has improved the last year, and that your applications might do better with cRIO in Scan Mode,
but these are some vital points you should evaluate closer.
