Can not see my PCI-MIO card remotely

[Pragma]

Hello All.

I just configured a new machine with an MIO DAQ card and a GPIB card.

On the local machine everything went really well, NI-MAX recognizes all the the devices, the DAQ test panels all check out and I can see and control the instruments on the GPIB bus.

Then, I configured the VISA remote server. NI-MAX, on a separate machine on the network, can see my new DAQ machine, listing the serial and parallel ports, and the GPIB, but there is no sign of my DAQ card. Refresh does nothing, and Troubleshoot Remote System Discovery only looks at stand alone systems like C Rio and PXI, not plug in card, at least as far as I can tell.

Some fairly heavy Googling has made me no wiser.

This has me stumped. I am running NI-MAX 17.5. The DAQ card is and old PCI-MIO-16 and the PCI-GPIB is not much younger, if any

Any ideas?

[MrJacket]

Hey,

Just to clarify, what DAQ card are you using and have you checked the readme for NI-MAX 17.5 to check compatibility? NI-MAX is the same on both machines?

[Pragma]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the ideas. I went through everything and upgraded all drivers and other software, from MAX to VISA to DAQmx. I have the latest and identical software load on both machines.

The board is a PCI-MIO-16E-1 (NI 6070E) and as far as I can tell , it is still compatible with all the software.

I did have identical versions of MAX, but the DAQ s/w differed slightly.

That's MAX 17.5 0f0, VISA and VISA run-time 17.5, DAQ mx 17.6 (times 3)

I have the VISA server set to display all PCI/PXI devices, but the results are still the same. Everything works fine and displays fine locally, and everything displays fine remotely except for the Multifunction DAQ card.

I thought of reversing the location of the boards, as a test, but for the moment, the only other machines I have are laptops or with PCIe busses. That may be the next step this weekend.

I am a little unclear on exactly what is required to see the board remotely. As far as I have learned, the only thing I should need is MAX, VISA and VISA remote, configured correctly of course. Any other s/w, like DAQ drivers and NI-488.2 would only be required when I want to control the remote cards in a VI. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance for any ideas or feedback.

[bstreiff]

DAQmx is its own driver stack is not built on top of VISA and is therefore not remotable using the VISA remote server.

[Pragma]

OK...

Thanks Brandon,

But as this is my first attempt at using hardware remotely, I'm not sure I understand the significance.

Doing a little digging, it seems that remote multifunction DAQ can only be performed if I am using PXI or some sort of USB  or other serial attached device via VISA.

Is this correct?

If it just isn't part of the system then I am guessing my only alternative would be to make some sort of VI with the DAQmx at the far end and a DataSocket or something like that, to communicate..

Managing configuration and acquisition remotely would be a chore, but doable. It surprises me that NI hasn't implemented something like this.

Am I on track here?

[bstreiff · Accepted solution]

The remote NI-VISA server is a mechanism for issuing (rather low-level) VISA operations over a network connection. As such, it only works with NI-VISA. NI-DAQmx is a completely different driver stack from NI-VISA. Thus it does not work with the NI-VISA server.

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@Pragma

If it just isn't part of the system then I am guessing my only alternative would be to make some sort of VI with the DAQmx at the far end and a DataSocket or something like that, to communicate..

This is correct. You would have to write an application on the computer that has the DAQ hardware and uses the NI-DAQmx APIs, and then publish that data over a network to the computer on which you plan to read it. You have a number of options here: DataSockets, Web Services, TCP sockets, Shared Variables, etc.

Doing a little digging, it seems that remote multifunction DAQ can only be performed if I am using PXI or some sort of USB or other serial attached device via VISA.

What do you mean by "remote" here? We may have different definitions.

In the case of a USB Multifunction DAQ instrument, all processing is still "local" to your computer, even though the device itself is connected via a USB cable. This is also true for PXI/PXIe instruments in a chassis connected via MXI or MXI Express-- the NI-DAQmx driver stack is running on your local computer.

For PXI/PXIe instruments in a chassis with a controller (either Windows or LabVIEW Real-Time-- these would be the "Remote Systems" in NI-MAX, by the way), you would have to deploy an application to the controller that would use the NI-DAQmx APIs and then publish that data over DataSockets, Web Services, etc as I've mentioned above.

Managing configuration and acquisition remotely would be a chore, but doable. It surprises me that NI hasn't implemented something like this.

Am I on track here?

The Data Acquisition Idea Exchange would be the place for such feature requests.

[Pragma]

OK, thanks very much, that clears up a lot, and it is worse than I thought 😉

I had assumed that any Multifunction DAQ  that was USB attached would be able to operate more remotely that just the local machine it is attached to. My thought was that, as VISA is inherently a serial protocol interface, it would make sense, as it would with PXI.

Live and learn,

Cheers,