NI platform to Choose

[Wise700]

Hi,

We have to develop a system which continuously monitors the alarm status and display in the UI. Currently these alarms are physical Bulbs and we want to move to More intuitive visualization with LabVIEW. Additionally we want to have data acquisition of some of the parameters like pressure, flow etc ( and possibly some analytics )and also have them displayed in HMI ( touch screen monitor). And have detailed floor plan kind of UI showing all the alarms.

Would building a system around C-Daq windows controller chassis with touch screen monitor suffice for these requirements, note that this system would have to run continuously for Months (years) as these are safety critical alarms.

Please let me know what is the correct NI platform to do this.

[GerdW]

Hi wise,

I would discuss such questions with my local NI sales representative.

(Usually I invite him into my office and offer coffee and cakes for the discussion… :D)

General comment: are you sure you want to have WindowsOS computers running "for years" and drive security/safety relevant stuff?

[rolfk]

In addition to what Gerd said, if this is indeed safety related functionality you may likely not be in compliance with machine safety regulations if your entire safety is based on such a hardware alone. These units are basically all computers even if they are embedded computers, which can fail, crash or otherwise malfunction. If human life safety is at stake you really will want to have additional fully approved hardware to protect the critical parts of your installation. Otherwise insurance claims might get nasty after a failure.

For normal data monitoring and logging, I do not see a problem with using the hardware you propose for the described task.

[crossrulz]

If all you are doing is displaying the alarms, you could get away with the cDAQ.  But if you need the application to react to the alarms, you really should go with a cRIO and have the FPGA do as much of the safety critical requirements as possible (FPGAs do not crash since they are just defined hardware).

[Wise700]

Thanks all for the replies,

What we are looking at is just displaying the alarms and a technician would go and take corrective actions. Was just concerned about the uptime of the system, as it should be a highly available system  and not stop working even if run for years.

So I got it that  if controlling is involved cRIO would be better choice, as we can use FPGA to do the safety critical time intensive tasks.

Yes I will check with the NI support as well.

Regards,