Simulating RT targets?

[golubovski]

Hello,

I have ordered a cRIO-9073 with several modules for a short-term project, but it will not arrive in time. I can see this hardware can be simulated as FPGA traget. Can it be simulated also as RT target? - To be used with LabVIEW RT.

Thanks in advance,

[golubovski]

Additionally, I'd use this opportunity to ask a general "simulation" question - what VIs are supposed to be used for simulating input (acquired) signals with simulated devices/hardware?

Thanks again,

[Kevin_F]

Hey golubovski,

You will not be able to simulate a cRIO in MAX like you would a Daqmx device.  You will be able to write your LabVIEW code for the RT target as if it was present in your system by adding it as a target in LabVIEW and manually selecting which modules you are using.  You will not be able to get simulated data from the modules but will be able to develop your codebase. Without a real time target there isnt a great option for simulating how your code would run since you would have to run everything locally on your development machine. This would be an option if you wanted to test the logic of your code but were not worried about any performance issues.  You could then pass simulated data generated on your host to your real time code being tested using shared variables. I think this could be useful testing if you were creating a large application and wanted to be able to test some of the logic before getting your actual hardware but if most of your application is just based on acquring data from the cRIO I don't think this is going to be a very accurate test of how the system will actually behave.

In general if you are using a simulated Daqmx device you will be able to use the same Daqmx commands in LabVIEW that you would use with a real Daqmx device they will just return simulated data (often a sine wave) instead of actual data. 

Post back if you have any questions on this.

[golubovski]

Kevin,

Thank you for responding! You are right - I am not interested in the RT peroformaces but rather how to make it work. This is my first cRIO, so far I have experience with cDAQ. I posted this topic since there was no possibility to simulate it in MAX, yet I saw that option in the FPGA project. When i explored the RT project settings/options there was no such available.

So, if I understand you correctly I can actually simulate a cRIO-9073 chassis with three C modules (9401, 9263 and 9239) also in the RT project? Concerning the simulated input/output what VIs can I use to "generate" DI and AI? I don't mind DO/AO.

Thanks in advance,

[Kevin_F · Accepted solution]

Hey golubovski,

You will be able to simulate the cRIO chassis in LabVIEW such that you can access all the IO variables associated with the modules.  You will be able to use these in your program but if you actually try and run it you will need to run it on an actual target.  

If you wanted to simulate behavior you could set up a system on your host computer that just wrote data (using some of the waveform generation VI's) and published that data to variables on the network.  Then in your test cRIO code you could read this data and perform whatever calculations you need.  This code would not translate exactly back to the RIO since you would be designing it to reference variables you created on the host machine and not the IO variables from the cRIO module. Essentially you would be creating VI's on your host machine that simulate the behavior of a cRIO module.  I don't know if this is what you are looking for but I could see it being used for an early proof of concept.