Connect Amulet display to sbRIO

[ccloud]

I have programmed my Amulet display and also have an RT VI on my sbRIO 9636 that needs to communicate with the Amulet.  I have the Amulet connected to the sbRIO using the USB port.   I have also installed the following software on my sbRIO:

1) NI-VISA 15.0.0

2) NI-VISA-USB Passport 15.0.0

When I run the RT.VI it is not seeing the USB port on the sbRIO.  I am assuming that I am missing some software on the sbRIO but cant figure it out.

Thanks

[ccloud]

Update:  I loaded NI-Serial RT software to the sbRIO and now I see three ASRL ports on the board.  Unfortunately am still not communicating with any of the ports.  I can move the VI to "My Computer" and plug the Amulet into my computer and everything works OK.  I move the VI back to the target and plug the Amulet into the sbRIO and it wont communicate.

[Spex]

What VISA resource name have you wired into the Amulet Open function?

Does the Amulet device appear in the MAX remote devices hardware tree when connected to the sbRIO?

Regards,

[ccloud]

I wired a control to the resource name input on the Amulet VI.  I see three ports: ASRL1::INSTR, ASRL3::INSTR and ASRL3::INSTR.

I do not see the Amulet device in MAX remote devices hardware tree.

Thanks,

Craig

[ccloud]

Spex,

Any suggestions from my reply yesterday?

I appreciate your assistance.

Craig

[beccamir · Accepted solution]

Craig,

To clear up some confusion, you should not see your Amulet device in MAX, you should only see the sbRIO. Also, you cannot communicate over USB between the sbRIO and the Amulet device, but you can communicate over Serial (RS232). 

You are correct in saying that you are missing software on the sbRIO because there is not a driver for the sbRIO to use USB. 

[ccloud]

Thanks Becca.  Connecting to the Amulet through the serial port works.

[beccamir]

Glad the information was helpful! 

[Spex]

Hi Becca,

Do you know where that (lack of USB support from RT targets) is documented?  I've read through the getting started material for the Amulet display, and nothing I've read indicates that USB is not supported on RT targets.  The online documentation implies that it is supported. One whitepaper mentions that USB may not be ideal, but that is far from being "unsupported" (see below:  )

http://www.ni.com/tutorial/52139/en/

http://www.ni.com/white-paper/52138/en/

The documentation I've read also appears to indicate that the Amulet display uses a USB-to-Serial converter on board, and that is what allows VISA to be a common driver for USB and Serial connections.

Thanks and Regards,

[beccamir]

Spex,

The documentation is not intuitive. I believe that the wording is very confusing. The communication between the host applications (on Windows OS) and the Amulet can be done through USB. The communication between the embedded targets such as cRIO or sbRIO and the Amulet must be done through serial via NI-VISA.

For the Winodws OS, there are USB drivers that emulate the USB to COM. On the RT OS there are no such drivers. The RT OS does not know how to emulate the USB to COM so it is unable to communicate.

I am going to look into creating some content on this or getting the current content editted.