More 1997 PCI-CAN, How to upgrade from LV6.1 NIDeviceNet.llb VIs to LV2012

[DowNow_]

Hi,

I've got this old system on Windows 2000. It has ** a lot ** of calls to the VIs in the LabVIEW 6.1 DeviceNet.llb, VIs called DNET...

If I upgraded to LabVIEW 2012 and got a new NI PXI-8532, what would it be like to get the old code working? Is there a new LabVIEW library/api for devicenet? Or do all the VIs in the current LabVIEW devicenet library have the same names and connector panes as in LabVIEW 6.1?

(I talked to a very good Industrial Com AE, but why can't I use my Premier Support to talk to a **DeviceNet** specialist at NI?)

cc

[Jesse_D]

Hi Dow, 

You are looking at the old, deprecated NI CAN driver based dnet. We dropped support for the PCI card around NI-DNET 1.5 and currently are on verision 2.2. The backend of the driver has changed since then also. Now there is no dependency on another driver, I think that happened around version 1.6. However, the api hasn't changed much.  

If you were upgrading from a more intermediate version of the driver I would expect the code to upgrade without manual modification. However, I haven't tested a jump as big as you are considering. I am not sure of the behavior but I do anticipate some manual modification. Fortunately, this should just be replacing and re-wiring VIs. 

I recommend upgrading your card, even if it takes a little longer to get the project done. Right now the card you have isn't supported in any way and troubleshooting or replacing a broken card will be extremely difficult. You didn't mention which version of labview you are using, if you are using 6.1 I recommend you upgrade also. 

There is an entire discussion to be had on upgrading old code and we have some useful documents on the topic. If needed I can help plan, but the basic idea would be: 

1) Backup code and plan upgrade. 

2) Upgrade old code.

3) Modify for new driver. 

[DowNow_]

I **really** appreciate your feedback. The plan is to upgrade and get through the next few years until their product eol. They are trying to decide whether to upgrade the two NI-based racks, or reverse engineer it and rebuild the whole thing on a major brand PLC platform, yow. There's also traditional daq calls in there that'll require same rewiring as you describe below. So I think my next step is to analyze the code and make an estimate on what'd take to replace old api VIs. And forget about chasing the Error 11 🙂 Thanks again.

cc

[Jesse_D]

Glad to be of help. 

I would look closely at the t-daq code. Switchiing to daqmx will be more than just dropping in more VIs and the API isn't the same. There are, however, a lot of examples for daqmx and rebuilding the functionality might not take long at all. There is a good support forum for daqmx if you haven't used it before. 

[DirkW · Accepted solution]

There is a white paper about switching from old Dnet1.x  code to IndCom for Devicenet 2.x code:  https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YFj9CAG&l=en-US

DirkW

[DowNow_]

This looks like the kind. Thank you!

cc