Compact Labview RT ETS controller with CAN support

[PatC]

I need a very compact real-time controller for a vehicle control application, and I would like to use LabVIEW RT. The only interfaces I need are CAN and Ethernet, and I don't need a huge amount of processing power. Something like a CompactRIO or Compact FieldPoint would probably work very well, but I would rather not have to make room for the extra backplane slots that I don't intend to use. I also don't really need the FPGA. Is it possible to connect a CAN module to a RIO or FieldPoint without having to use a 4 or 8 slot chassis?

Also as an alternative, is it possible to use a NI PCMCIA CAN card with a third party PC/104 controller running ETS as a LabVIEW RT target? Assuming that I use a PC/104 that is supported by RT (I have a few in mind), are drivers available to use the NI CAN hardware under ETS? Has anyone ever tried to do this, or does anyone know of any other third party hardware that would support CAN in LabVIEW RT? I realize that probably the only way I will know for sure is to buy the hardware and try it, but I am hoping that someone can provide some insight before I get to that point.

Thanks,
Patrick

[Adam W]

Hi Patrick,

ETS should not be a problem. However, we do not officially support RTX on other PCs.  So basically, you would have to try it out.  Sorry I don't have any insight further than that.  Perhaps someone else has actually tried something similar.

Regards,

Adam W
Applications Engineering

[GerardoG]

Hey Patrick,

I'm pretty sure that the PCMCIA CAN cards will not work on an RT ETS system. There are no PC/104 CAN devices with LabVIEW Real-Time support that I can find. So unless you want to get into driver development... I think you have two options. 1) Use the PC/104 system with an adapter that would allow you to use an NI-CAN PCI device. 2) Use a cRIO 4 slot with a CAN module.

Gerardo

[Adam W]

Thanks for the catch, Gerardo!

Sorry about that.

[PatC]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to check out the PC/104 PCI option.

Patrick