Hello,
You're right in saying that for VIs to run on an RT engine they must be compiled. In fact, the RT module downloads fully compiled code to the RT Engine, where the VI can then execute. However, it is possible to launch code that is stored on the hard drive of the RT target. There are a couple of ways to load VIs onto an RT Engine that don't require a connection via a development machine.
The first is to have the VI load when the controller boots into RT. To do this, you can build your VI into an executable and define it as a startup application. Another option with built executables is to launch them via the command line from some host computer. Using the application builder to accomplish this is described in greater detail here. Neither of these solutions requires an explicit download from the development environment but there is still one other option that would give you even more flexibility, and that is VI Server.
Using VI Server, you could have a host-side application that launched a VI that is stored on the hard drive of the RT target.
Is this what you were looking for?
Thanks,
Dafna
