cRIO-9030 - which version > LabVIEW2019(32) can be used?

[heel]

We have a cRIO-9030 which we can program with LV-RT and LV-FPGA in LabVIEW 2019(32).

To use a more recent version we have tried LabVIEW 2020(64) and 2021(64) but they cannot load a LV2019 created project....

The warning in the broken project link to the cRIO is

The Driver CompactRIO 21.0 is installed:

As it is an older system maybe LabVIEW 20 and LabVIEW 21 do not support this cRIO9030?

And yet again it may be because it is only 32bit versions which are supported...

I have not been able to find the answers on ni.com so this leaves us with a lot of trial and error attempts which we would like to avoid.

Anyone here who knows this?

Thanks

[santo_13]

LV FPGA is supported only in 32-bit.

You cannot open FPGA project on 64-bit LV.

[rolfk]

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@santo_13 wrote:

LV FPGA is supported only in 32-bit.

You cannot open FPGA project on 64-bit LV.

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Actually, LabVIEW 2020 already lets you download a 64-bit FPGA Module installer. How useful that is considering that there is no 64-bit Realtime Module installer yet is not clear to me. It's probably just for the FlexRIO PCI and PXI plugin cards.

LabVIEW 2021 has an installer for both modules for 64-bit LabVIEW.

The cRIO-903x definitely should be supported since LabVIEW 2014 and is still an actively supported product in the latest LabVIEW version. Have you tried explicitly to install in that order:

- LabVIEW 2021 (64-bit)

- LabVIEW 2021 Realtime (64-bit)

- LabVIEW 2021 FPGA (64-bit)

- CompactRIO 21.0 or higher

As there is no LabVIEW 2020 Realtime (64-bit) I do not think that you can support any cRIO in LabVIEW 2020 (64-bit).

The CompactRIO 21.0 Readme doesn't state which chassis it supports for 32-bit and 64-bit LabVIEW but it only lists the 904x and 905x chassis as being supported for LabVIEW NXG, which is 64-bit only. So this might be an indication that the 64-bit version so far only supports these chassis for normal LabVIEW too.

[santo_13]

@Rolf - thanks for the information (haha, need to familiarize with the latest releases)

[heel]

Thank you Santhosh and Rolf,

I discovered that there are likely other issues which prevents use of recent LV versions.

Here is the installed software list:

So clearly cRIO need an update. However when I try this I get this reply:

I have logged into linux and it does have opkg installed:

admin@cRIO-9030-01A044D4:~# opkg -v
opkg version 0.2.2

Albeit a 0. version so presumably a bit old.

The question is then how do I install the latest LabVIEW software given this error message?

Admitted - this is a new question compared to my initial question. But I cannot verify the suggested answers before this new problem is solved.

I have considered 

erasing the whole thing but I need to have confidence how to go from there.

Thanks for any insights you may have.

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[rolfk · Accepted solution]

The first step after formatting is to check in NI-MAX what firmware version is reported for your chassis. opkg 0.2.2 would indicate that there is probably quite an old version installed. You should probably have firmware revision 6.5.0f0 or something along these lines. If it shows 3.something you have definitely still an old firmware that will not support newer LabVIEW installations.

Once you have a recent firmware on the chassis, the next step is to install the LabVIEW software runtime and support for the LabVIEW version you have. You can select all the individual packages if you really want to, but it is usually much easier to select the according NI-CompactRIO toolsuite, For LabVIEW 2019 you want the NI CompactRIO toolset 19.x, usually 19.0, or 19.1, 19.5 or sometime 19.6 for if you have LabVIEW 2019 and either 19.5 or 19.6 if you have LabVIEW 2019SP1. Once the LabVIEW Realtime Runtime on the chassis matches the version on your development computer, you should be able to connect from the project to the chassis and deploy compiled LabVIEW VIs to it.

But I would definitely try LabVIEW 2020/2021 (32-bit) if you are not using a cRIO-904x or cRIO-905x. 64-bit support for other cRIO chassis is likely not yet present in NI-CompactRIO 21.0.

[heel]

Thank you Santhosh and Rolf,

This worked nice and smooth - after assembling the courage to just _format the disk_, then no more dramas!

As I showed in the NI-MAX clip previously I formatted it from a right click menu.

Once that was done I was offered to install a handful of Linux OS versions including a legacy cRIO. I went with the newest version for LV2021.

Then the relevant LabVIEW tools was added.

All this from within NI-MAX

I can confirm - LV2021/64bit does not work - 32bit does.

I did already have the newest firmware on the device as this was one of the first things I updated.

For the record the system is now configured with NI Linux Real-Time x64 4.14.146-rt67, firmware 8.8.0f0

I have a final clarifying question: What does firmware mean in this context? Because as far as I know often firmware means the entire code in an embedded system, but this can't be the case here.

An embedded system typically has a BIOS, bootloader, OS, and application. So is firmware here referring to the BIOS part?

Thanks.

[rolfk]

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@heel wrote:

I have a final clarifying question: What does firmware mean in this context? Because as far as I know often firmware means the entire code in an embedded system, but this can't be the case here.

An embedded system typically has a BIOS, bootloader, OS, and application. So is firmware here referring to the BIOS part?

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I'm not quite sure and the LabVIEW documentation isn't very consistent either. The one you can install in NI-Max is likely the flash part that would be considered the BIOS on normal computers. The chipset on the cRIO needs to be initialized to get the CPU and FPGA hardware all working before the OS can be loaded. It may also contain GRUB but I'm not sure.

But NI-Max also calls the FPGA bitfile that can be downloaded to the FPGA flash to determine the FPGA functionality itself firmware as well at some points. Select the FPGA icon inside the Devices and Interfaces group and you get a button to Update and Erase the Firmware, which refers to the bitfile here. But this is something else than the firmware that gets installed from inside NI-Max.