Upgrading/changing operating system for NI PXIe-8115 Real-Time computer

[leonardojc]

Hi, all.

Some year ago, the laboratory for which I do my research acquired a NI PXIe-8115 real-time system, for usage in applications involving robot control over CANOpen.

The system we acquired came with Phar Lap ETS real-time operating system, which is said to be compatible with DOS and implement a subset of Win32k interface.

The problem is that the lack of a number of kernel32.dll functions prevents me from using some interesting libraries (like LAPACK, ZeroMQ and OpenSim) and system APIs (like file/memory mapping) on my project. That's a heavy constraint for our possibilities and forces me to reimplement a lot of stuff using the limited CVI API.

Besides, Phar Lap ETS is said to be de discontinued, so there is no hope for a new updated version, supporting newer kernel functions and C runtime versions.

A visit to National Instruments products page showed that there is a version of 8115 shipped with Windows XP/7 operating system, but it looks like it doesn't support real-time applications, as there is a RT version as well, for which the operating system is not specified.

Is there a way to upgrade our system to a more modern OS, with broader application support, without losing RT capabilities ? Is there at least a way to change the operating system to conventional Windows in an easy way ?

Thanks in advance.

[leonardojc]

Just to add: this page shows that there are new ETS operating system version (NI ETS) beyond the last Phar Lap release (13.1). Is there a real difference between them ?

I have LabView 2015 installed on my desktop machine (which communicates with te real-time target) and its real-time module available. According to the mentioned page, I should have NI ETS 2015 available for instalation, but accessing the real-time target through NI-MAX shows that its operating system is still Phar Lap ETS 13.1.

Am I able to upgrade it ?

[Plínio]

Hello, Leonardo.

Regarding the upgrade to a newer version of ETS (NI ETS 2015) I could not find information about new features so far, I'm doing a deeper reaseach about it. A good way to know if those libraries is supported by the new version of OS is to use the DLL Checker 2015.exe, refer to the link below.

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z0000019M0tSAE&l=en-US

In case of positive answer, you can update the OS using your host machine and install LabVIEW Real-time 2015.

Another thing I would suggest you is to call us, since you have LabVIEW 2015 and probably you have an active support service. 

Tel: 11 31493149

Regards,