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Welcome to our
Website for July 2014
Three new companies
to look over.
Huge range of Form Factors for
DAQ & Comms
++ Android RS-232 out of the USB port.
Tough Smart Phones &
Tablets + Android Sticks
Loggers - Sticks, Transport, Laboratory & Atmos
This month our
Product Cateory focus is:-
Comms
and Comms Control Systems
Ports, Switches, Converters, Virtual, Wireless
+
Some
Types of IP controlled Devices
IP Telephony, IP Survalliance, IP Power etc
A total of 28
companies with a huge range of technology, most of it Industrial
Grade.
Some are world
leaders in their particular fields.
RS-232 and 485
was slated to fade away witht he introduction of USB years ago.
However, serial comms is still alive and well with UART sales
hitting peaks each year. It is slower than USB but way better
for industrial work and it actually works in a noisy electrical
environment.
Have you struggled
with USB in industrial settings.?
Two thinsg I
found that can help USB amazingly.
1/ Power the
USB device off a good clean power supply if it will allow it,
don't use the PC Power supply which is subject to a lot of noise,
spikes etc.
2/ Buy industrial
grade USB cables with strong shielding. Many USB comms failures
are not software drivers as many think, but actually power to
the USB device not being sufficent to run it when it sthe USB
device is under power load.
Comms Hardware
this month
PCI, cPCI, PXI, PCIe - RS-232,
422, 485, Sync
Serial Converters & Isolation
Serial Device Servers - Web & Ethernet
USB Connectivity
USB Ports for Virtualisation over Ethernet
USB to Serial
Ethernet Managed and Unmanaged Switches
Ethernet Extenders
Ethernet Media Converters
Copper and Fiber Media Converters
POE Switches
Drop in Wireless serial cable replacers
Wireless - RS 232, 485, Canbus, Modbus,
Wireless LANs and Bridges 2.4 and 5 GHZ
Industrial
Buses
Profibus
Modbus
Foundation Fieldbus
Canbus
CAN/CAN Open Comms converter Modules
CAN/CAN Open Ethernet Gateways
IP Devices
IP Telephony
IP & USB Power Controllers
IP UPS monitoring and control
IP PDU monitoring and control
IP Environmental monitoring
IP Power measurement
IP Camera survalliance
And a host of accessories for Comms systems.
Most Laptps and even Desktops
do not have Serial ports any more. We can convert these computers
with several options.
Some LabVIEW info for this issue.
Windows XP is
no longer supported by MS.
If you are using older versions
of LabVIEW that were designed to run in Windows XP, you may like
to try to port these development tools and applications to Win
7 32 bit version and see if they run OK.
There is much discussion on Blog
sites about this. Many say moving from XP to 7 is not possible
for LV 7,.1.1 etc even LV 8.
Most of the issues seem to be
with NIs device drivers rather than LabVIEW itself.
Many sites report success with
LV 7.1.1 on Win 7. So try and see if it works for you.
I have been experimenting and
most LV 7.1.1 programs that use the old MCC Legacy LV system
called MCC Universal LabVIEW Library work just fine on Win 7
32 bit.
NB they will/may hang in the
Win 7 64 bit. Not always, it seems to depend on the computer
drivers rather than the OS itself.
Now if you aren't successful
with this migration and you have to migrate to say LV 2013 to
get your programs to work in Windows 7, you can still use the
old MCC Universal LabVIEW library and even mix the new MCC LabVIEW
ULx LabVIEW library calls in the same program,
What this means is that you can
keep a lot of your old code and for any new DAQ work, just jump
into ULx and you should be fine.
I can't gaurantee 100% but so
far after messing around with over 200 Megs of old LabVIEW 6.1.1,
7.1.1, 8 and even 9 code for clients, I have found this is the
case for me.
This step of moving to Win 7
is a significant help in keeping your clients or sites safe,
as you will still be keeping your computers up to date with the
any security patches etc.
Do have a read also of this article written
by Bloomy Controls USA as it offers more info, ideas and solutions.
I know many sites are still running
LabVIEW 6 and 7 as it is much simpler than LV 8 onwards and surprisingly
the code is much faster and also smaller usually.
The above tips will/may be very
helpful and give your old code many more years of safe operation.
As a last point. Porting LV 7.1.1
code to say LV 2013 should be straight forward if you have to
take that step.
I have also experimented and
almost everything lifts across cleanly. Code with References
may not lift cleanly and require a little work.
However it will give you an opportunity
to clean up your old code.
All the best.
Let MasTec know if you need any
help in this type of work.
Next month we will look at LabVIEW
OOPs.
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