LED not lit on USB-6218

[RLHart]

Just received my new USB-6218 usb powered DAQ board.  I installed the NI-DAQmx drivers and plugged in the device using the included  USB cable to my Dell 6400 Mobile workstation, and Windows recognized and installed the NI drivers, but the green LED on the device, which is supposed to indicate power, remains unlit.   NI-MAX does not find the device, nor does NI Device Monitor.   Under windows (Vista 32 bit) device manager, the device driver shows up under Data Acquisition Devices/USB-621x Loader.   Under Services, the NI Device Loader is Started.   The NI-MAX is version 4.4.1.   The NI-DAQmx is version 8.7, which is listed as compatible with this device.  The USB power works to power any other USB powered device I plug into it.     I have tried unintalling and reinstalling the drivers and MAX several time.

Should I assume I was sent a device that arrived DOA?  The manual just says to go to ni.com/support if the LED is unlit.

[John_P1]

Hi RLHart,

Which variant of the 6218 are you using?  The BNC and Screw Terminal variants are actually considered to be separate devices by DAQmx since they use different Product IDs (PIDs).  The screw terminal variant should work with your driver, but support for the BNC variant was not added until DAQmx 9.0 (mentioned in the DAQmx 9.0 readme).

I saw in the other thread that you mentioned that you cannot use a higher version of DAQmx since you are using LV 7.1 (see DAQmx LabVIEW compatibility chart, you could technically go up to DAQmx 8.9 and keep LV 7.1 support, this still wouldn't support the BNC variant though).

The LED I believe should be off if the 6218 is not communicating with the host PC (for instance if the proper firmware has not been loaded by the driver) so this doesn't necessarily mean that the device is not receiving power.  If you are using the BNC variant then I think the most likely reason for the failure you are seeing is that the driver cannot load firmware for the 6218 BNC (you would need to use at least DAQmx 9.0).  However, installing DAQmx 9.0 would uninstall the LabVIEW 7.1 support, so the solution isn't as straightforward as a simple upgrade to DAQmx.  Please confirm whether or not this sounds like your situation and I can get back to you with possible next-steps.  If you are not using the BNC variant then the course of action would be different.

Best Regards,

[RLHart]

John,

Thank you very much for your response.   Just after posting my last post one of my hard drives crashed, so I have been preoccupied with getting the computer back up and running.  All is restored now, so I can return my attention to data acquisition.   You were correct in your assumption regarding the BNC variant of the 6218.   I did update the DAQmx driver to version 8.9, and it does now appear to work so far.   I have not tested all aspects of the 6218, but it does at least record analog inputs in both NI-MAX and Labview 7.1.   What should I expect NOT to work with the BNC variant, running DAQmx 8.9? 

Thank you,

Ron

[John_P1]

Hi Ron,

Interesting... according to the readme (linked earlier) the BNC variant was first added in DAQmx 9.0.  Typically, you wouldn't expect hardware to work at all DAQmx versions prior to their release (i.e. the same behavior you were seeing before with DAQmx 8.7).

However, it isn't completely unheard of for hardware support to be added to the driver before the hardware is actually released--it looks like this might have been the case here.  You may encounter some superficial discrepancies (e.g. missing documentation, incorrectly drawn connection diagrams), but if the driver can communicate with the hardware then I suspect that all of the underlying functionality will be available to you (since it is shared with the previously-supported screw terminal version).

Best Regards,