touch screen control with compact rio

[Turillo]

HI, everyone!

I'm developing an application to control a chiller with Labview 2012 and Compact RIO. I would like to create an HMI panel to visualize data and some basic control.

However, I would use a third-party touch screen (not NI). Buying Labview Touch Panel module can I do so?

My question is: if it is just a screen and not a PC, by simply connecting it to RS232 port of Compact RIO and launching Real-Time application,

will it allow me to control the VI?

Thank you!

[Gearmiester]

No, the RS232 port is not an input.

I went round and round with this before begining our application which is using a cRIO and a touchscreen computer.

There has to be communication between the computer and the cRIO over some kind of IP protocol. (over ethernet)

While the cRIO can run its own program per say it does not have the memory storage to impliment a graphic UI and run the program.

The Real-Time functionality should be looked at as a process link between the UI and the FPGA/Output of the cRIO.

[crossrulz]

What cRIO are you using?

For most cRIOs, the RS-232 port is just used as a terminal output.  This way you can read various status of the cRIO based on whatever you decide to write out of it.

There is a new series of cRIO hardware that can use a touchpanel and display its front panel.  They are the cRIO-903X series units.  They have a display port and a couple of USB ports that you can use.  But I'm not sure if they are compatible with LabVIEW 2012.

[Turillo]

We are using cRIO 9012...I saw the new cRIOs, but our area seller told us they work with LV 2014 only, so I guess we'd better buy a Touch Panel Computer to connect with cRIO than buy both the controller and LV licenses (we are a team of 20 people so we would need a bunch of licenses...). With TCP 2206 it works, right?

[crossrulz · Accepted solution]

I don't see why not.  You will just need to make a good communications protocol between your cRIO and the touch panel computer.  I find Network Streams work extremely well.

[jwscs]

I am working on a similar situation (crio9068 and touch-(something)-pc)

and what i've gone with is:

splitting the overall application in two parts RT (realtime target) and UI (user interface target) and having a controller for each that sets up the Network Stream Endpoints (you need two network streams for bidirectional ocmmunication), and then dispatches into (local) queues, that my asynch vis can access.

a more complex method you can find in the examples or if you create a new crio project (it uses advanced message queues).

good luck

p.s.: im using lv2014 (before that 2013) but i dont know wether the same holds true for <2013