Most of my LabVIEW RealTime deployments have used TCP/IP with SCPI style commands. It has been very successfully in both ease of use and long term sustainment.
The RealTime system detects if any new cards are in the PXIe on powerup that are part of a predefined library and automatically loads the legal SCPI commands I previously defined.
With using pure TCP/IP my LabVIEW RealTime is agnostic to whatever is controlling it from the host device. I disable all other services besides the webservice. It's not even detectable in MAX as a device. (This is intentional, to prevent less experienced more ambitious engineers from breaking my design without going through the extra steps of manually going into the PXIe BIOS)
I've had end users use Python, c#, and all flavors of LabVIEW without ever having to know what language was even being ran on the PXIe. It literally looks like any other SCPI device.
I also developed a web interface that works very well for integration, or just lazy DIO command, and measurements. The web interface also doubles as a simple manual with SCPI command examples. I really like this design pattern, and I've been using this pattern for over a decade. Once the box is deployed I never really have to touch it again.
I want to mature this design to the next level and make it LXI compliant; complete with IVI-COM and IVI-C drivers.
The LXI specification is fairly straight forward. I could write my own.
I find it hard to believe that I'm the first LabVIEW RealTime Developer that wants to turn a RealTime target into an actual product. Lots of OEM sbRIO's out there hidden away in products.
Are there any examples, open source initiatives, or software products out there that use LabVIEW RealTime as a LXI device? I'm a bit surprised that I can't find anything out there in my searches.
I can turn my Arduino with Ethernet shield into a LXI compliant device easier than I can my LabVIEW RealTime, and I find that odd.
(Just to clarify I know the LXI specification requires testing and validation, but I'm not looking to get the LXI stamp on my device. I just want to make it easer for my end users to plug and play. Also, the new LXI specification includes secure communications that some of my end users have been asking about)
I want to play nice with other LXI devices, and make a seamless interface for my end-users.
Does anybody know anything out there that could help?
Regards,
Engineering - The art of applied creativity ~Theo Sutton
