DAQmxSelfT​estDevice

[Concordian07]

Hello,

I'm currently developing in LabWindows 8.0.1 using USB-6211 and I'm trying to implement a "board-check" function that could verify its basic I/O, communication status, power, etc...

According to my search, the closest function to use would be DAQmxSelfTestDevice. However apparently as I understand, it's more or less similar to DAQmxResetDevice. 

Unfortunately I couldn't find anymore details about this self-test function... Could anyone please point out exactely what does this DAQmxSelfTestDevice function do? Is there any other "self-test" function call I could use? Please advise.

Many Thanks!

[Trey_C]

Hi Concordian,

You are correct in your assertion that the DAQmxSelfTestDevice is a function subset of the DAQmxResetDevice which does effectively check the communication status and power but if you are looking to verify I/O as well, you might be interested in integrating the DAQ Diaganostic Utility into your application. This is available for free here. You could either package this with your application or you could even, theoretically, write this yourself.  While we don't provide documentation on how to program each of these tests, the list of tests this utility runs is available in the readme and would be a very good place to start when considering designing your own tests.  The one thing that may not be as clear in the documentation is that these tests are performed by changing the internal routings of devices in order to test the input and output terminals.

I hope this gives you a place to get started; good luck with your project!

Regards,

Trey C.

[Concordian07]

Hello Trey, Thank you for the clarification and recommendation. I have few more questions... I see the utility is only supported on XP, 2000 and NT, could you please confirm if there will be support eventually for Vista and 7? I'm currently running LabWindows 8.0.1 and apparently the function DAQmxSelfTestDevice not implemented (I received an error saying the prototype is missing). Could you please confirm that, what could I do to include it? Regarding the DAQmxResetDevice, I could reasonably only generate a non connection error - by not connecting DAQ to PC. Could you please let me know what are the other potential errors (or error codes) that could be returned from calling DAQmxResetDevice? (i.e. you mentioned about power check, what's the error code for that?) Please advise. Many thanks Brandon

[Trey_C]

Brandon,

I'm sorry, I linked you to the previous version of the diagnostic utility!  Here is the latest version which includes support for Windows 7.

The DAQmxSelfTestDevice should be located in NI-DAQmx Library » Advanced » Device Control.  If you can't see this then I would recommend upgrading your DAQmx Driver to the latest version, available here.  

For a list of errors that you could expect to see, I would suggest navigating to the following folder: C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\Errors\English .  Here, you can find a text file named NI-DAQ LV-errors which specifies all of the error codes you might expect to receive from one of our DAQ devices. 

Regards,

Trey C.