Showing front-panel of a VI (which runs on RT-target) via Ethernet on Laptop

[Tooly]

Hello,

my question is about a VI, which runs on a RT-target (It is saved in the Project tree as marked with an arrow in the attached Picture). Lets assume, we start the VI with a Laptop over Ethernet cable. The VI has got a frontpanel which showss a graph and some parameters...

I noticed: If a Background image (which is saved on the hard drive disk of the Laptop) is added to the front panel, the performance of the graphs is extremely slowed down. Of course thats no important issue, anyhow it lead me to some questions:

Should a VI on RT-target at all be monitored by a Laptop via Ethernet-Cable? Or should on the Laptop run a second VI, which gets only some monitoring-data via nework-variables? What´s the difference?

Thanks very much!

[nathand · Accepted solution]

You usually use the front panel connection for development and debugging. For normal use once the application is complete, you would create a separate user interface application that runs on a laptop (or desktop), not on the RT system. For exchanging data between the RT system and the user interface you can use shared variables, TCP, UDP, or whatever other protocol is appropriate for your system. This gives your more flexibility in the communications, a more responsive user interface (because it's running locally), and a more stable RT system since it's not responsible for the user interface. It also potentially reduces the amount of data transmitted by the RT system because the RT system sends only data, not the entire graphics of the interface.

[a_clucker]

Hey Tooly,

I normally find that using a second VI on the PC has better performance, which makes sense because the cRIO is only sending the data you want to monitor as opposed to all the front panel data.

[Duffy2007]

Hello Tooly,

you can try this

Configuring Remote Front Panels on a Real-Time Target

then you can access the vi in the browser, if you want more then only monitor the vi, then use one of the options that are explained in the posts before.

[Tooly]

Ok thanks all for the helpful answers!! 

[MarkCG]

what's the story with remote front panels? I thought they where no longer going to be supported

[Duffy2007]

Hello MarkCG,

at the moment they work and they are simple to use. For a long term we will get different and new options. One way at the moment are also webseervices with a custom web side, or the other methodes with communication over TCP that was  mentioned here.