NI-Switch Relay Add-On Feedback

[jansobj]

Our system has PXI-2569, PXI-2570, & PXI-2586 cards. This is an older system we have that we are upgrading from Veristand 2011 to 2015SP1 to take advantage of the new UI manager.

[Kilometers]

I just loaded up the custom device in 2015 SP1 and I was able to run it successfully with a PXI-2575. I've got a few questions to hopefully narrow things down.

1. Would you be able to share your system definition to help me reproduce this issue internally?
2. What's the simplest system definition that can reproduce this behavior? Can you reproduce this with a single switch card in the system and nothing else? Is there a minimum level of complexity for the sys def to trigger the error?
3. Just to make sure I'm not making any bad assumptions, did you download the built "NI-Switch Relay_Built_1.0.1_2015.zip" from the community page, or did you download the source and build it yourself?
4. Could you open the source code project of the custom device in LabVIEW and open the RT Driver VI and let me know if you get any errors from either of those, or see a broken run arrow on the VI?
   

[Kalin_T]

When I visited with Brett last week he shared with me that when he was doing some of the driver updates not all drivers were updated the same way. There were some interdepedences that did not all update together. I wonder if this is affecting the custom devices. He also mentioned that the VS FIU add-on works fine in the same system with the PXI-2510.

[Kilometers]

Hi Brett, 

I got your email and I'm working on setting up hardware currently to try and reproduce your issue. Can you reply to my questions 2, 3, and 4 in my last post when you have a moment?

[jansobj]

Not sure what happened. I thought I already replied to 2,3, & 4. I won't have time to answer 2 until I get back from a business trip I may have someone else work on it and contact you.

3) I've done it both ways. Didn't make a difference.

4) Nope no errors.

[Kilometers]

Thanks for the reply. The most immediate test that would help speed up troubleshooting would be to see if you can remove the two FPGAs and the Lambda Genesys DC Power Supply custom device and still see this error.  The results of that will determine our next testing step.

1. If the FPGA is required to reproduce the error I will need your bitfiles to reproduce this issue. 
2. If the FPGA is not required for the error to occur:
   
   1. We will want to try deploying system definitions with each of the card's custom devices individually and nothing else present. The key thing we're looking for here is; do all cards cause the error or just one in particular.
      1. If it is a particular card I will focus on reviewing the custom device code for that card.
      2. If it is all of the cards then I suspect it is a driver level issue. It would be best to get an image of your PXI if possible so I can confirm all the driver interactions. If that's not possible I will use your screenshots to get a system as close to your system as possible and perform testing.

[professor_xh]

I am currently here helping troubleshoot the system.

To answer question 2,  I have created a simple project only using one instance of the NI Custom Relay Device. I tried 3 variations of the project for each of the cards on the system, 2569/100SPST, 2586/10SPST, 2570/40SPST.

Each variation reproduced the error.

As requested I am attaching an image of the PXI as it is currently: App Image

I've also ran MAX report on the system as is.

[Kilometers]

Thanks for getting that to me. I've downloaded the image and I'll be doing testing this afternoon. Just to clarify did you create this image using the Replication and Deployment Utility (RAD), or some other means? 

Also, did you simply add the custom device to your system definition and try to deploy to get the error, or did you have to do any configuration, add any channels or anything else to trigger the error? Knowing exactly what you need to do to cause the error will speed up my troubleshooting.

[professor_xh]

Yes, the image was created using the RAD utility.

To reproduce the error, I started from scratch with a blank project and set up the controller with the same attributes as the larger project (i.e. ip address, Pharlap target, etc.). The from there I only added a single NI Relay Custom Device. The first deployment configured the custom device to use the 2569/100SPST topology and enabled all 100 switches.  The next deployment I removed the custom device and re-added it and configured it to use 2586/10SPST topology and anabled all 10 switches.  I followed the same steps and redeployed again this time with 2570/40SPST topology. All deployments made it to the target successfully, but in the console after deployment the same error still appears.    

[Kilometers]

Good news! I was able to reproduce the error you described using the image you gave me. After seeing the error twice in a row to confirm it wasn't a fluke I tried reinstalling NI-Switch (and nothing else) to the target from my own machine and then redeployed VeriStand. After the reinstall I did not see the error. It seems like somehow the version of NI-Switch on either your host machine or your RT PXI is having problems. I'd recommend downloading a fresh version of NI-Switch and reinstalling to your host and then deploying the new driver to your target.