Controller for laptop + LabVIEW + two PXIe-1085

[oknice92]

I'm purchasing two PXIe-1085 chassis that I plan to control with LabVIEW on a single laptop right by the two chassis themselves.  I want the simplest controller for each chassis that will allow me to physically plug the laptop directly in to the two chassis with a USB cable or something similar.  What would be the best controller for this?  

There's so many controller options, it's hard to know which one is correct, and I've only ever dealt with SCXI systems up until this point.  

[Guilherme_Correa]

Hello,

If your PXI systems have embedded controller (real-time or windows), you can connect to them by using ethernet cable. You can use a switch to have both in the same (or even diferent networks) and then have the laptop connected to it. Each controler comes with 2 network adadpters, so you can have 2 diferent networks on each PXI. 

If this is not your case and you don't have a embedded controller, you will require to have the MXi board in your PXI, and a PCMCIA adapter to MXi in order to comunicate with the PXI. You would need to have a master PXI connected to the laptop, and from this PXI have a daisy chain connection (MXi or Optical Fiber) to the second PXI.

If you have budget to get the embedded controller, it would be the easier (but most expensive) solution.