Crio 9149 as standalone chassis

[linu95k]

Can crio 9149 be used directly with host PC without any Crio controller?

Can i connect it directly to the windows host PC to control the C series modules?

If yes, what are the caveats/limitations? Also, if yes how is different from other crio controller?

[raphschru · Accepted solution]

From NI documentation and setup guide (section "Connecting Ethernet and Power"), connecting it to the host PC directly is one of the intended uses of the Ethernet RIO.

Then you can chose to either access I/Os directly through the Scan Engine interface, or create your own FPGA code that can do some custom processing and communicate with it through the FPGA interface. The FPGA interface also allows the use of DMA FIFOs for better performance and control on the data transmission.

However I don't know of any performance comparative based on the chosen setup. The question whether you should have an intermediate RT target depends on what you want to do with the data that goes in or out of the FPGA.

Using an Ethernet RIO is really convenient when you don't need additional real-time capability and can process the data directly on the host PC. It also simplifies implementation because you don't need an intermediate application on a real-time target. If something critical needs to be done, it will be in the FPGA (but with limited space).

Using a cRIO is for more general applications when you need an FPGA and time-critical loops that do not fit or are too complicated for an FPGA. However it will require 3 "applications": PC, RT, FPGA.

Regards,

Raphaël.