UPC UA Toolkit Deployment

[mey5699]

Hello all. Maybe you can help me with my problem. I want to create a software (currently LabVIEW 2018) in which I use the OPC UA Toolbox from NI. Both the toolbox and the deployment are licensed on my development machine. From my software I created an installation. However, when I run this on a target machine, my program starts, but an error message "-356727" appears immediately, which means "OPC UA Toolkit: license is not activated".

A discussion with technical support did not really provide a solution. There they are of the opinion that the customer, i.e. the one with the target computer, has to get the license from NI (including the computer number, the serial number of the license and even more details). But this can't be the solution!
I thought, for exactly this case I had bought the deployment license.
Since I have not found any such problem on the net, so apparently I am the only one with this problem, probably a simple solution will exist. But I can't find it.
Many thanks in advance.

[GerdW]

Hi mey,

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@mey5699 wrote:

There they are of the opinion that the customer, i.e. the one with the target computer, has to get the license from NI (including the computer number, the serial number of the license and even more details). But this can't be the solution!

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This is the solution!

The deployment license is tied to the computer and its user so they need to buy their (deployment) license…

[mey5699]

Hello GerdW,

thank you for your quick answer. That means, the customer, who bought my software, has the task to get his own license from NI for a toolkit, he has never heard about? He is interested in the special designed software, not in the development environment. And does this mean I do not need the deployment license on my development system?

This sounds a little bit strange to me.

Best regards,

   mey5699

[Walker34]

You also need a development license. When you program and build with the toolkit.


In our company, we sell our software in a package that includes an installation service. We install and configure the software on the machine (sometimes by the customer, sometimes by our company, sometimes remotely). During this installation, we install the licenses. Note: we buy the runtime license for ourselves and then sell this license to our customers, with a comfortable margin. With an NI account and an Internet connection, activation is very simple.

[mey5699]

@Walker34: Thank you for your reply. Yes, both the toolbox and the deployment are licensed on my development machine.

But your solution seems not feasible for my purpose. The target computer is part of a test system far away. There is no internet available and the customer has no NI account. Then the activation process becomes a litte more complicated.

When you say you sell your license to the customer, that means you can't use this license anymore. How is this managed? Does the license on your development system expire somehow when a new user is using it? 

[SimonDeacon]

Yeah - unfortunately with NI products where the runtime is licensed you end up paying for each and every computer or user (depending on the license chosen) that uses the solution. We have the same situation where we have a production test system that is used across about 20 stations. It uses TestStand and therefore we had to purchase 20 runtime licenses to use our developed solution.

It doesn't feel great, and is just yet another nail in the coffin to get us away from NI products and the high prices, which only seem to be getting higher. For OPC UA using the python libraries is working for me currently, and there are also standard implementations for other languages. 

Unless you absolutely have to use the NI solution for a project like this due to other considerations (such as wanting a load of hardware hooks using off the shelf hardware) then I'd choose a different route.

I think NI need to wake up. The whole subscription debacle on top of high prices and restrictive licensing is going to kill their market.

[mey5699]

Yes, indeed. Actually I spent a lot of time to figure out how to do the deployment of my software. I thougt, the deployment license allows me to spread my software. Silly me. In my eyes the current solution is too complicated, especially for the customer. He doesn't know anything about an NI toolbox that he is supposed to license. If you could transfer the license with the installer, then it would still be ok.

[Walker34]

When you say you sell your license to the customer, that means you can't use this license anymore. How is this managed? Does the license on your development system expire somehow when a new user is using it? 

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No!

We have one dev licence that we keep by us. (One per programmer).

We don’t have runtime licences by us.

We sell one runtime licence that we activate only once on the target computer by Customer. We deliver a build.exe, not vi’s!

Sometimes we transfert ownership of licence to the customer, but not allways. When licence ownership stay by us, we put it in a list of licences for each project. Because sometimes we have to generate a new activation code, for example when customer must change a broken computer.

You can generate an activation licence code when you know the computer id of the customer. Without internet. But it is annoying, I agree.