problem on WinXP / Labview 6.1 with VISA (serial port)

[musicus]

There is a problem on WinXP / Labview 6.1 with VISA which i use to poll the state lines of the serial port. The only functions that i use are "VISA Open", "Find Resource", line state properties and "VISA close".

On my own machine (WinME) it works fine as a standalone application (with runtime engine in the same direction), even if i rename the Labview directory so that Labview is not found.

From my VXIpnp directory i deleted all but these files:

directory "Win95",
subdirectory "Bin" containing "NiViAsrl.dll",
subdirectory "NIvisa" containing "visaconf.dll".


When shipping this to WinXP (and copying "VXIpnp" to the root directory), the serial port was not found, so i renamed the direction "Win95" to "
WinNT", but this did not work also.
I installed the VISA server, although it seems not to be required -- no result.



Final question:
What must i do for distributing the program as a standalone application for all windows platforms?

[JoshuaP]

You MUST install the NI-VISA Run-time engine on the target machine. NI-VISA is a driver and when it is installed it does a whole lot more than just copy and paste a few files into one directory. In order for NI-VISA to operate it has to make modifications to the Windows registry and copy files to the operating system folder. In addition, different files are installed for different operating systems. Even different versions of Windows.

If you develop any program that uses a driver, you must always install that driver or run-time onto the target operating system first. You can download the latest VISA runtime engine at http://digital.ni.com/softlib.nsf/webcategories/85256410006C055586256BAC002C51FA?opendocument&node=132070_US

-Josh

[musicus]

Thank you, Josh.

It's good to see that there is a solution.

These files are quite large (13 and 15 MB). I heard that Labview 7.1 is able to make installers that contain minimum options for serial devices. Would such an installer replace the complete runtime installer, and would it be smaller than 13 MB?
In this case somebody who has LV 7.1 could make an installer for me without a program (or, if one is required, with an empty one), so the people who download my program would not be angry about that huge amount of data.

-Joachim-

[musicus]

I just saw that the VISA runtime engine is not free for not registered users.
Is there any way to implement the few functions i need directly into my software (e.g. the suggestion which i described above, or another)?

[JoshuaP]

Hey Joachim,

In order to create an installer that includes the VISA Run-time engine for serial IO you will have to purchase LabVIEW 7.x. See screen shot. This packages a small compact version of the run-time that can only be used for serial, but it takes up much less space. The installer that I created has my application, the LV Run-time, and the VISA run-time and it is about 26 MB.

That is much smaller than if I had to include the 32 MB LV 7.1 run-time and the 14 MB VISA run-time separately. It would have been even smaller if I would have uncheck some of the items that I wasn't using.

-Josh

[musicus]

Hallo Josh,

somewhere on this site i read that LV7 does not support WinME. I do not have the money to buy an update AND a new computer every 2 years. I'm a private user, not a company.

I think about removing the serial port feature from my application.

If not, i would like to know wether i am allowed to distribute the VISA runtime installer with my application and wether i can create a link to that file on the LV web server. I noticed already that allegedly it is not free for not registered users. But how could i then distribute it at all?

Thank you for your help.

-Joachim-

[Dennis_Knutson]

The licensing of the LabVIEW run-time and VISA run-time, has changed over the years. It's my understanding that with LabVIEW 7, a total of 10 VISA licenses was included that you could distribute without additional fees. I'm assuming that your software would not be free so if you needed additonal licenses, you could simply include the license fee. You really need to contact NI directly to get clarification on the legal issues and fees as they relate to your version of LabVIEW, VISA, and the number of copies you plan to distribute.