error 10003 AI Hardware Config

[idiv22]

I just restored NI-DAQ Traditional to a piece of test equipment using two AT-MIO-16E-2 boards.  When I started nothing worked and all I got was lots of I/O errors and buffer errors, and Device Manager showed no drivers present for the two boards even though Device Manager recognized their presence.  The old NI-DAQ I think was 5.0 running under Win 95.  The customer made a big mess when they updated to Win 98, plus they blew up at least one of the amplifiers and a huge capacitor bank that the MIO's are driving by not hooking up a load to the amps output, when playing around.  I put NI-DAQ 7.1 on and updated the Win 98 with DCOM98 and a new Installer update, everything started responding properly.  Great!  There was no Lab View Run Time Engine present and the original version was 5.1.  I put Run Time Engine 5.1.1 on and things got better, I thought I was done at this point.  The application which drives the amps through the MIO boards starts with a diagnostic and the first thing I get is a message which says "The Amplifier is in Inhibit", which it is not.  The amp switch is in the Enable position. I click OK.  The next thing I get is:  Error - 10003 AI Hardware Config, NI-DAQ LV: The value of a numeric parameter is invalid.  It was at this point the customer asked me if smoke pouring out of the capacitor bank and amplifier could have anything to do with the error message and Inhibit recognition problem.  I asked them why they didn't tell me two weeks ago when I started straightening out the NI-DAQ problems that they had blown up the amp and cap bank?  They didn't have a good answer.  OK, so my question is, if I get the amp problems sorted out is this error 10003 gonna go away?  Or is there something else I am gonna need to do to clear the 10003 error?  Or is the 10003 error completely unrelated to the blown amp, and if its not what do I do to get rid of the error?          

[Neal M]

Hello idiv22,

Welcome to the NI forums.  The error you are getting is a little vague, so determining if it will go away is a little hard.  From the research I have done on the error,  it appears that the error is coming from an input to the AI Hardware Config.  This means that one if the inputs is not correct, so it appears that this does not have to do with the "thermal event" you are seeing.  I would go through each of the inputs to the VI and make sure that they are correct (especially the numeric values as stated in the error). A knowledgebase I found (here) talking about AO_Configure says that the range input cannot be 0 (which makes sense, you cannot have 0 range), so this is something to check.

If you were programming with our newer driver (DAQmx), we could simulate the device and test our code that way.  Traditional DAQ does have this capability though. You could try to disconnect the setup from the card and just use a DMM to test the output.  This would remove the possibility that the setup is causing the problem.  I would then reccomend running an example program (located in LabVIEW under Help»Find Examples...  When that window opens, select the Browse tab and the Directory Structure radio button.  The examples are in the "daq" folder:



If those run, then it is most likely something in the setup.  I hope this is the answer you were looking for.  Post back with any questions.


Message Edited by Neal M on 01-11-2008 04:38 PM

[idiv22]

Neal,

The "thermal event" occurred at least three years ago.  They've since replaced the smoked capacitor bank and just left the piece of equipment broken.  They needed it this fall to test a set of sonar transducer elements for actual performance limits.  Lord only knows how most of the software got wiped off the computer, I don't think it was just changing Win 95 to Win 98 anymore.  I think paniced attempts to restore/fix the equipment three years ago when they powered up the cap bank and amplifiers without a load connected and smoked everything is what led to the trashing of the NI-DAQ software.  The amp which produced the voltage to blow the cap bank has never been replaced and is probably deader than a doe-doe.  The amp has an actual physical switch which has inhibit/enable on it.  The switch is not a soft switch, further the MIO receives, and excuse me if this seems silly, because this is all new to me, a feedback from the amp in terms of whether or not the switch on the remote amp is in enable or inhibit.  The feedback to the MIO from the switches position may be in the form of a simple HI/LO, or it may be in terms of, refering to your refvoltages, in the form of a minimum amp idling voltage, which if the amp is fried sure is not being met at the moment.  Even the LO of a HI/LO if defined by being some nominal value above zero may not be being met because of the destruction of the amp.  The customer has a spare amp, they say, and Saturday we will swap in the spare and try again.  Then again there maybe somethings I am not understanding at the moment, cuz its all new to me, end to end, sonar, the test set, and NI-DAQ/Labview.  But I am learning and have the ability to learn, if you get me.  The test amps by the way are huge as is the cap bank, remember we have to produce energies high enough to concern people about their effect on whales.  The US Navy only commissioned twenty of these custom design test sets to be made, two of which we have here.  Frankly, we are now more at the end of this problem than at the beginning, --thank goodness. 

Ian    

[idiv22]

Neal,

I'm learning all right!  Nothing as far as the amps seems to be working right and we will check the other one tomorrow, Sunday.  The cap bank turned out to be good.  There is no evidence the amp we looked at today is seriously bad.  I'm learning about the device config files by leaps and bounds, the old version of NI-DAQ was 6.1, I can say that with confidence now.  I'll bet the original was 5.0 or older, somebody in around the year 2000 updated the NI-DAQ to 6.1.  Interestingly, there are NO tests conducted after this, the computer/application logs and date stamps every test.  There just aren't any, period, after the update to 6.1.    There is also evidence the customer is playing with the NI-DAQ files when I go home, because things change when I come back the next day, maybe not, this is normal and I'm used to that, but it does make things harder.  I am now teaching myself how to fiddle with the config files and your help has been helpful.  I haven't looked in the config files yet, but I will do that Sunday, I have a feeling I'm gonna be depressed.  On the other hand, the problems I can foresee encountering now shouldn't be insurmountable, just annoying.  I've got the pinouts for the MIO cards and that ultimately may also be helpful.  What are the chances the AO, and AI config files are empty, or got wiped when the customer has been updating things?  If so, the BIG question, would the application or NI-DAQ itself have them stored somewhere and where would that be?   This is where you out there could be a BIG help?  If not I believe with a certain amount of reference to the amp tech manual I can probably figure out what the config values and settings should be.  The amplifiers are the only thing we are hooked to, nothing else, and the only AI in values we are gonna have are voltage and current of the amp as the test is conducted, probably both expressed by the amps hardware as some 0 to X VDC level.  I am so looking forward to that.  AO values are going to be those which control the amplifiers output level both in voltage and KHz.  The good part is the amplifier tech manual will define the AO and AI values it provides and requires, further it will define required DIO.  The only fly in the ointment is that I don't have the amplifier tech manual, -- yet.  I ordered it Friday and it won't get here for ten days.  The only DIO I see is an IN and thats gonna be the amplifier status in terms of Enabled or Inhibited, which by the way is not On or Off, its already On in the traditional sense, Enabled or Inhibit refers more to "safe" and "be careful its ready to go".  In the end we have to produce a sinewave or o-scope  type display, on the computer monitor and saveable as a file, further will be impedance values calculated which tell us the current performance state or condition of the transducers. The app still seems to be handling these functions appropriately.

Ian

[Neal M]

Hello again Ian,

Wow! This sounds like an interesting and involved problem.  It always amazes me at the things engineers do with our hardware.  To answer your question about the possibility of the files being deleted, if this were the case, then the program would tell you about this when it loads.  All of the VIs are loaded when the program is opened, and if it cannot find one (it was deleted, moved, etc), it searches and then prompts the user to find it.  This can be changed for runtime, however this is the default.

If you are worried the the driver has been changed somehow, you can download several of our newer versions of our Traditional DAQ driver, just make sure that it is compatable with your LabVIEW version and hardware (the program will update itself).  If you decide to rewrite the program for some reason, I would strongly recommend using our new driver, DAQmx.  This is far superior to the Traditional DAQ driver and much easier to learn.  If you are interested in this, let me know and I can point you to some resources.

I hope this information helps you out, if I can be of any more help please post back.

[idiv22]

Neal,

I have two AI's, Device 1 (voltage) the AI is ACH0.  Device 2 (expressed as a voltage but current) the AI is ACH0.  The config file for both Devices is set to Mode Differential, and Range -10.0V - +10.0V.  Both Devices are gonna have to be Mode Differential, and Range -15 to +15, the board which produces the AI at the amplifier has a bunch of -15 and +15 voltage regulators on it, so that makes sense to me.  The amplifier book is ten days away.  There is only one AO and it is an AC voltage sinewave, which gives us both the frequency and voltage drive to the amplifier we need, pretty obvious actually but I had to think about it.  There are six DIO's to Device 1 (DIO 0-5) and they are pretty straight forward.  I'll post again when I get a good test.  But I think I've got it.  I am pretty pleased, two weeks ago I had never played with sonar, NI-DAQ, or anything like this, I didn't even know it existed.  Yup, I'm pretty happy!