Can't get USB-6008 to work properly in a stand-alone application

[sthoran]

Problem Description :

I am trying to build a stand alone application using the USB-6008 as the ADC for the system.  Actually, I have two of them running in parallel on different USB ports to give me 16 channels.

The target CPU is an Athena II (a Pentium II running at 500 MHz with a 4 GB flash drive as the hard drive).

I have been unable to achieve a successful stand-alone application build.

Steps followed:

1 - make the .exe in the LabVIEW project builder.

2 - make an installer for the target system.  I have checked the following additional installers: LabVIEW Run Time Engine 8.2; NI-DAQmx 8.3; NI-IMAQ 3.7; NI-VISA Runtime 4.0.

The LabVIEW application is being developed on an identical CPU to the target system.  The only difference is that the development system has a 16 GB hard drive and the LabVIEW 8.2 FDS installed.  On the development system, everything works fine.

I even went back and removed all of the stand-alone installation components on the target system and started over by (1) installing the drivers that came with the USB-6008 and then reloading the install for the application over this.

When I plug the 6008 into the USB port, the test panel for Dev 1 is usable and automatically comes up.  I cannot seem to get to the test panel for Dev 2 (they are both plugged in at the same time due to the USB plug configuration on the Athena). 

I tried accessing the devices using MAX on the target system.  However, MAX goes away on the target system as soon as I try to investigate the Devices and Interfaces menu.  I even did a refresh within MAX on the target system but it will not behave.  On the development system, MAX works as expected.

Bottom line: am I including the proper installers to address the problem with the USB6007 or am I missing something here?

NI Software :  LabVIEW  version 8.2

NI Hardware :  Multifunction DAQ device USB-6008 Driver Version :  Presently unknown OS :  Windows 2000 Customer Information :

Stephen Horan

New Mexico State University

US

sthoran@nmsu.edu

Ph: (575) 646-3117

[Chris_D]

Hey Stephen,

It sounds to me like you are correctly including the necessary installers into your installer. Can you give some more details about what exactly happens when you plug-in both devices? Are you receiving an error or is something happening where one device seems to disable the other device when you plug it in? When you say MAX goes away, do you mean it crashes? Does it give an error? Are you able to use each 6008 individually without problems? More details on the errors (screenshots would be helpful too) and what exactly is happening will help us better troubleshoot the problem.

[sthoran]

Chris,

Thanks for the reply.

1 - When I say Max goes away, I mean that it starts out running, I get past the splash screen and am in the actual utility.  Then I select the Devices menu and Max exists without warning and I am back to the O/S screen.  No error codes or anything of the like.

2 - In the FDS environment, the two ADC's work fine.  In the standalone, because I am running an execuitable, there is really nothing to see.  However, I will make screen shots and upload them to you this afternoon.  I'll also upload the VI's making the data call.

Thanks for your time.

Steve

[sthoran]

Chris,

Here are some screen shots to show what I am talking about:

1 - ADC_VI is the base VI within the system that is talking to the USB-6008.  The Task Control was build individually for each of the two ADC's.  Then the task was extracted and passed to the common read from the calling program.

2 - ADC1 shows the output from the first ADC as seen in the development environment.

3 - ADC2 shows the output from the second as seen in the development environment.

Steve

[sthoran]

Chris,

I did not see the JPG attachemnts show up so I am attaching them again.

Steve

[sthoran]

Chris,

Here is what MAX shows when I use it in the development environment.

The file desktop shows what should be visible when the stand-alone application is running.

The RecCommand shows the user command comming in that initiated the ADC read.  The Results box shows the ADC output.  This is from the development environment.  In the application environment, the results box does not show any measured values.

Steve

[sthoran]

Chris,

Something just crossed my mind: might the DAQmx task control information not be captured correctly as part of the build process?  Maybe it is stored somewhere that is not in the build path and therefore not being captured?

Just a thought.

Steve

[Chris_D]

Hey Steve,

We need to try and isolate whether the problem is with the Measurement & Automation Explorer and your DAQmx installation or with your actual built executable. I suspect that the problem is with your DAQmx installation.

MAX disappearing when you select Devices & Interfaces is obviously not expected behavior. Let's troubleshoot this issue first. In your original post you said that you were installing NI-IMAQ 3.7. Are you using any vision acquisition hardware? If not, then you do not need this driver. I actually found a bug that causes MAX to crash when you expand the Devices & Interfaces when certain versions of NI-IMAQ are installed. I would suggest either upgrading your installation of NI-IMAQ or uninstalling it if you don't need it.

What we ultimately want to do is be able to expand the Devices & Interfaces, right-click on each device and choose Test Panels. This will allow us to test the functionality of each device without having to use your built executable. We can also perform a self-test on each device by right-clicking on each of them and choosing Self-Test.

From the screenshots you sent, it also looks like you have a 3rd device setup in the system that is not present. To remove this I would suggest resetting your DAQmx driver by in MAX going to Tools » NI-DAQmx Configuration » Reset NI-DAQmx Configuration. You can then step through the screens to reset your configuration.

[sthoran]

Chris,

I have included the IMAQ because we are running a Matrix Vision BlueFox camera and it requires some of the IMAQ support.  I have another problem here: the IMAQ Write JPEG File VI does not execute properly in the calling VI I have written.  Again, it works fine in the development environment but not in the stand-alone environment on the other computer.  However, since that is a secondary problem for my experiment, I would rather get MAX and the ADC problem fixed first because that is crucial for the experiment.

I do have a LabVIEW 8.5 kit and I would assume that it has a later version of IMAQ.  I can do an install of that.

The third device is my third USB 6008.  I am not using it in my experiment.  I was using it as a bench test device.  I can certainly remove it from the MAX configuration and not compromise the experiment.

I will reconfigure MAX now.

Steve

[sthoran]

Chris,

I have been working on this today.  Here is what I have discoverred:

1 - I installed the IMAQ 3.8 from the LabVIEW 8.5 distribution kit we have.

2 - I rebuilt the VI's used to access the individual USB 6008's.  The change I made this time was to tell the task builder for DAQmx to store the task information "in the project."  I don't remember where I stored it the first time but I know it was not "in the project."  This time I made individual tasks for each USB 6008 rather than feeding the task as a control variable. When I built the data acquisition task with the wizard, I tried the self test within the wizrd and got data values.

3 - I tried checking out both devices with MAX 4.3 on the development system.  Both devices passed the self test and the test panels were able to be displayed and used.

4 - When it was time build the stand-alone application, I noticed that the data acquisition tasks appeared in the project tree.  I also noticed the first appearance of the NI-DAQmx.ini in the data folder of the project tree.

5 - After building the new version of the application and its installer, I moved them to the target system.  The installer had the IMAQ, MAX, VISA, etc. added to the base runt-time installer.

6 - After installing the new version on the target system, I plugged in the USB 6008's into the target system.  In the Windows 2k hardware manager, I saw the two USB 6008's listed under the NI devices listing.  I could not see any identifier information but there were two devices listed so I assume both were found.

7 - I tried to use the devices with the version of MAX 4.3 that was installed as part of the stand-alone build and MAX still crashes when I tried to look at the Devices and Interfaces pull-down on the left.  The Dev2 test panel still comes up when the devices are first plugged into the system.  Nothing there for Dev 1.

8 - After rebooting, I tried MAX again and did a refresh first before starting Devices and Interfaces but MAX still crashes.  I also noticed that in MAX, under the Tools tab, the NI-DAQmx USB driver selector is grayed out.  The others on that menu are not grayed out.

9 - I tried to use the stand-alone application (my ultimate goal, after all).  The application does start and starts to execute code.  I know this becasue the first thing the application does is turn on a relay to power the radio and this does happen.  However, as soon as the relay clicks, the front panel on the monitor screen freezes.  It does not even get a chance to fully load the front panel.  Also, the mouse and keyboard toally freeze up.  I need to reboot at this point to regain control.

I am toally stumped now. 

Steve