Scan Engine & EtherCAT Custom Device Feedback

[StephenB]

Hi Usman,

I talked to my R&D team and apparently due to licensing being in limbo right now as we have not released and it is past beta builds... I cant give you a download of that.

The options now are:

1. Wait for NVIS 2014 to release soon
2. Try building the device yourself with the instructions I posted earlier

Sorry about that

[JeKo]

Hi,

We have a configuration with a PXI and 2 EtherCAT chassis.

First chassis is configured to use only Scan Engine, second uses a "mixed mode" (2 modules are controlled by FPGA, 6 are using Scan Engine).

Custom device is synchornized with VeriStand PCL.

Everything works fine, but...

From time to time (it is not regular) we get an error:

******Scan Engine / EtherCAT CUSTOM DEVICE ERROR******

Scanned Variable Write in Scanned Variable Write (FXP) - 32 bit - unsigned.vi:900001->Scan Engine Custom Device.lvlib:Scan Engine RT Driver.vi:6670002->HP Loop.lvlib:HP Loop Main.vi->NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:VeriStand Engine State Machine.vi->NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:VeriStand Engine.vi->NI VeriStand Engine.lvlib:VeriStand Engine Wrapper (RT).vi

Code: -1950678941

User Note:    Close

******Scan Engine / EtherCAT CUSTOM DEVICE ERROR******

********************************

System error encountered.

:::Details:::

Error code: -1950678941

Error message: LabVIEW:  An empty string is not a valid URL.  If you want to reference the root container within a variable engine, you need to specify the path explicitly using one of the following URL formats: "[Variable Engine]://[Host Name]", "[Variable Engine]:", or "/".

********************************

It happens almost randomly - sometimes the system runs for few hours without an error, sometimes it crashes few minutes after deployment.

Any idea what can be wrong and how we can fix it?

--

Best regards,

Jerzy Kocerka

[StephenB]

Hi Jerzy,

That is a very strange error to get randomly. Can you answer some questions for me?

1. Can you right click your PXI target in MAX and create a report for technical support and attach it here? (When replying click used advanced editor in top right)
2. What version of the custom device are you using?
3. What happens if you run a system definition with only the custom device in it? Maybe try this over the weekend and see if you still see the problem.

Thanks!

[Jiri_K]

Hi Jerzy,

please check also the regional settings of Windows and also test with US regional settings. We found the issue in the past, when the variable or bitfile name contained undescore or localized characters on windows with non US regional settings.

Thanks

[JeKo]

@StephenB

ad 1. Technical report will be availble tomorrow - I will post it here.

ad 2. 4.1.3

ad 3. At the beginnig the system definition contained only the custom device (maybe also some scalling) and it was crashing as well. But I can try to run some tests during weekend.

@Jiri

Thanks for tip - Our variables to FPGA contain underscore characters ("_") - we can remove them and check if this help.

[JeKo]

Hi,

In attachment technical report from the PXI.

Regards,

Jerzy

[JeKo]

Hi,

during a week I run a test - I've created a new VeriStand project, added CD, configured it in the same way we have it in our system and changed regional settings to US on the host machine.

System was running over night and after ca. 8h it crashed with the same message.

During normal operation it works sometimes only several minutes before crash.

We also have now a second station with very similar configuration and it is crashing as well.

We also tried to deploy the project from the different machine - but it didn't solve the problem.

Any other ideas?

Regards,

Jerzy

[StephenB]

Hi Jerzy,

Thanks for doing that test and for the patience.

Can you provide the bitfile so I can set up a similar system to reproduce with?

Thank you!

[JeKo]

Hi,

Can I send it to You via email?

It's proprietary stuff of our client and I don't want to make it public.

--

Regards,

Jerzy

[Cla_Cup]

Hi Devin,

     I'm Claudio Cupini, AE from NI Italy. I'm looking for Scan Engine & Ethercat Custom Device to use in NI VeriStand 2014 and with LabVIEW 2014.

Is there an up-to-date version of the custom device?

Thank you in advance.

Best Regards.

Claudio Cupini

NI Italy

AE Dept.