EPICS 2015 Client I/O Server on 64bit LabVIEW

[m.gabriel]

Hi guys,

ich have installed LabVIEW 2015 Full Development System andLabVIEW 2015 Full Development System 64Bit SP1 on a Win7 64bit machine. Now I want to install EPICS 2015 Client I/O Server (http://www.ni.com/download/labview-datalogging-and-supervisory-control-module-2015/5501/en/). However, doing so works, but it is installing only the 32bit version. I desparatley need it to work with 64bit LabVIEW. 

Any Ideas, I'm desparate by now???

Cheers

[Billy_JJ · Accepted solution]

try using this

http://www-csr.bessy.de/control/SoftDist/CA_Lab/

[natasftw]

Why do you need 64-bit LV?  DSC Module will only work with 32-bit.  What is it you're doing that requires the 64-bit installation instead?  There's no amount of wanting/needing, including desperately, that will make the DSC Module work for you.

[Jacobson-ni]

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@natasftw wrote:

Why do you need 64-bit LV?  DSC Module will only work with 32-bit.  What is it you're doing that requires the 64-bit installation instead?  There's no amount of wanting/needing, including desperately, that will make the DSC Module work for you.

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You can download the EPICS I/O server functionality without having to download all of DSC so I think the question is more specifically can you use just the EPICS I/O servers with LabVIEW 64-bit. I would guess no, but I haven't tried myself and it isn't specifically mentioned in any LabVIEW compatibility chart that I can find.

[natasftw]

Interesting.  I read the link text without clicking it.

I doubt they built two versions of the I/O servers: one to include in the DSC Module and one to install separately.  If they didn't, any compatibility that works for the DSC will match that of the partial installation. 

[m.gabriel]

Hi,

there are two packages for Labview published by NI for integrating EPICS:

-EPICS Client I/O Server

-EPICS Server I/O Server

While the naming scheme is clearly confusing, the first one basically allows you to create only a client and can be downloaded without the DSC module. With the second one you can create an EPICS server, but it is only included in the DSC and realtime module.

When beginning with this project I had two options the Client version from NI and the calab package, as suggested by Billy_JJ. Each of them has advantages and disadvantages, but I went for the one from NI.

However when things went along, we needed a lot more memory than 3Gb and now switched to calab. So I guess that is the solution. 

It is said, that 64bit Labview apparently is still merley a bad copy of the 32bit version. It is 2016. When spending these kinds of money on a software package, full 64bit support should be taken for granted. Especially when being advertised!

Good luck

[rolfk]

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@m.gabriel wrote:

It is said, that 64bit Labview apparently is still merley a bad copy of the 32bit version. It is 2016. When spending these kinds of money on a software package, full 64bit support should be taken for granted. Especially when being advertised!

Good luck

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Unfortunately things are never that simple. The DSC Toolkit is probably never going to be released for 64 bit, simply because it is really a miriad of different software modules that all would need porting, testing and veryfying to 64 bit and it never really sold enough to spent that extra effort. So then there remains the EPICS library. The Client functionality is available for free so demanding that a freebee is fully supported is a bit difficult. The Server functionality is tied into the DSC component so extracting that into an independent library is not trivial.

64 Bit LabVIEW is in itself just as major and well working as the 32 bit variant but some of the Toolkits are indeed not yet fully ported to 64 bit. Calling it a bad copy because of that is however a pretty strong statement that I could not support in any way. In about 1 to 2 years from now people will start complaining that new products from NI are only coming out for 64 Bit!

But the EPICS C source code is free to download although it's license is somewhat complicated. They claim it to be open source but also say that it has extra restrictions required by the US Department of Energy who paid for the development of the EPICS base library. But unless you intend to hide the fact that you used the EPICS software, it should not be a problem to use that source code in your own projects.

Of course still remains that someone would need to write an interface library for LabVIEW for this library in order to use it.

[LabLoko]

This is a dead link. Any updates on this thread would be nice

Jamie