Vista compatibility of NI DAQPad-6015

[Neil_S.]

Carl-Olof,

We do not have plans to support the USB DAQPad 6015 or 6016 on Windows Vista at this time.  However, I want to make it very clear that we are extremely interested in what our customers are doing and want to make them successful.  We are always seeking feedback so we can make better decisions about where to expend engineering resources to provide our customers the best product possible.  We appreciate your feedback and will take it seriously in future planning meetings.

From what I can tell you have several options with your current design:

1. You could create an adapter to interface your proprietary board to a USB-MSeries OEM such as the USB-6221/9 OEM or USB-6251/9 OEM.  These boards have the same or better functionality and are already supported on Vista.  These OEM versions have pinouts similar to the OEM version, but are not laid out in the same location and would require some custom cabling.  Depending on which inputs and pins you are using, how you plan to package the end product, and so forth this may be the most cost effective solution.
   
2. You could choose to use the unsupported NI-DAQmx 8.3.1 after doing your own extensive testing of your hardware setup and software to validate the system for your use.  This may also be cost effective but would cost additional money to test the product.  In addition, this will not work for Vista 64 bit.  To my knowledge NI-DAQmx 8.3.1 won't even work at all on Vista 64 bit.
   
3. You could redesign the proprietary board to interface with the USB-MSeries OEM.  This may be costly as you mentioned earlier.
   

We could potentially help with one of these solutions depending on the number of these systems you plan on creating.  Could you give us an indication of how many of these systems you plan on creating?  10, 50, 100, or more?  Have you discussed these issues with your local sales representative?  If not, I would highly recommend you contact them as they can often facillitate a solution.  To contact your sales representative see:

http://sine.ni.com/apps/utf8/nicc.call_me?loc=en-SE

I assure you that we want you to be successful in your application.  We look forward to working with you to find the most cost effective and reasonable solution to this issue.

Regards,

Neil S.

[Calle_Flexura]

Neil

Thanks for your clarifying answer. Now I can plan an upgrade of my product.

I did not realize until now that 6221 OEM seems to be a replacement for the 6016.

What I would suggest, for the future, is that NI, informs customers that are using OEM products, as early as possible. Essentially I would like such information as soon as old products are discontinued and a new product line, i.e. 6221,  is decided. Working with PC´s means that, if support for new platforms is discontinued, so is the the hardware. I hope that 6016 will be available as a spare part for some time.

Regards, Carl-Olof

[Neil_S.]

Carl-Olof,

To clarify, we do notify our OEM customer's when a device goes discontinued or end of life.  At this time we do not plan to stop making the OEM DAQPad-6016.  In fact, it is still supported in NI-DAQmx 8.6 on Windows XP.  We did not drop support for the device in anyway.  We chose not to add support for this device on a new OS but the support for all the previous OSes is still intact and we will continue to support this device in the driver for Windows XP.  We do not typically notify customers when we decide not to add a new feature unless we made a promise that the feature would be added.  Furthermore, we recommend on the product page for the DAQPad-6016 that our customers "Consider USB M Series for more channels and higher sampling rates."

Regards,

Neil S.