© 2005 National
Instruments Corporation. All rights reserved.
CVI™,
FieldPoint™, LabVIEW™, National Instruments™, and
ni.com™ are trademarks of National Instruments Corporation.
Product and company
names mentioned herein are trademarks or trade names of their respective
companies.
This document contains
important information about using the FieldPoint software with National
Instruments application development environments. Please read this document
completely before using the FieldPoint software.
FieldPoint 4.1
requires Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 or later, Windows 2000, or Windows XP.
With FieldPoint 4.0,
FieldPoint configuration moved from FieldPoint Explorer to NI Measurement &
Automation Explorer (MAX). To launch MAX, select Start»Programs»National Instruments»Measurement
& Automation. If you need help configuring your FieldPoint
system in MAX, select Start»Programs»National
Instruments»FieldPoint 4.1»Configuring FieldPoint in MAX.
FieldPoint 4.1.2 has
added support for cFP-1808 Network Interface to the FieldPoint software.
Timestamps for data on
an I/O channel may change to zero system time (6:00 P.M., 12/31/1969) if you
reboot the system while MAX or LabVIEW is connected to the channel and the
value of the data is unchanged after the reboot. For example, suppose you are using
a LabVIEW application to read data from a DI channel on a cFP-180x bank that is
configured to derive timestamps from a valid time server. If you reboot the
cFP-1808 bank, timestamps may stay at zero system time until the channel data
changes. This issue only applies if you are connected to the cFP-1808 bank via
Ethernet. To get more information about this issue and to find out if a fix is
available, go to ni.com/info and enter the infocode ex6r7r.
The cFP-180x User LED
channel is accessible only through an Ethernet connection. You cannot read or
control the User LED through a serial connection.
FieldPoint 4.1 has
added a new VI in LabVIEW 7.1 that enables you to read from and write to
FieldPoint items in the same VI call. This VI works faster than separate Read
and Write VIs, especially in embedded applications, as it combines the two
operations in one VI call. For information about the FP Write/Read VI, refer to
the FieldPoint LabVIEW Interface Help.
FieldPoint 4.1 has
optimized the performance of Publish Data VI and has added four new Publish
Data VIs. The new VIs help you better control individual Publish Data
operations and provide better performance than the original Publish Data VI.
For more information, refer to the FieldPoint LabVIEW Interface Help.
You can use the Copy
Bank Wizard in MAX to copy the configuration of one FieldPoint bank to one or
more other banks. For more information, refer to the MAX Help for FieldPoint.
With FieldPoint 4.1
and LabVIEW Real-Time 7.1 software, you can configure a [c]FP-20xx to run as a
Time Server. For more information, refer to the MAX Help for FieldPoint.
With FieldPoint 4.1,
you can configure 32-bit counters on the [c]FP-QUAD-510 in MAX without
combining two 16-bit counters. The new 32-bit counters can operate
synchronously with VIs running either on a host machine or embedded on a
controller. For more information, refer to NI Knowledge Base article
(37F9B3XD).
FieldPoint 4.1 has
added a Data Changed? output terminal for the FieldPoint Express
Block. You can connect this output terminal to other express blocks to
process data only when the value changes. For example, you can connect the Data
Changed? output terminal to the Enable input terminal of the Write
LabVIEW Measurement File block to log only changed values. Also, starting
with FieldPoint 4.0.1, you can use LabVIEW's Waveform Chart data type to
display FieldPoint I/O data on the front panel.
Use the Remote Systems
Install Software Wizard in MAX to install LabVIEW RT and FieldPoint software on
FieldPoint controllers. Refer to NI Knowledge Base article (37F9DEXD) for
information about compatibility between LabVIEW RT and FieldPoint software
components on the host machine and on the FieldPoint RT controller.
With MAX 3.1, you can
upgrade the OS on a [c]FP-20xx controller. OS Update updates the real-time
operating system on the controller and enables Format Disk. The updated OS
requires LabVIEW RT version 6.1.3 or later.
Bank_Status output of
the (!P)ReadBankStatus.vi has changed. If you are using this VI in your
application, and have the Bank_Status output terminal wired to a LabVIEW
indicator, you will see a broken wire. Rewire the terminal to fix your
application.
In older versions of
the FieldPoint software, the network watchdog timeout for Ethernet controllers
was half the expected value. For example, if you specified 10 s as the
timeout, the watchdog timed out at 5 s. With FP-160x Firmware 5.02 and
FP-20xx FieldPoint Drivers 5.0.2, the network watchdog uses the specified
timeout value. Use MAX to install the new firmware and drivers.
FieldPoint hardware
can now be configured in MAX along with all of your other National Instruments
hardware.
FieldPoint 4.0 has
added a new way of using FieldPoint items in LabVIEW that enables you to write
your LabVIEW applications for FieldPoint quickly and easily. To read more about
the new I/O control, refer to the FieldPoint LabVIEW Interface Help. To use the
new I/O control, select FieldPoint
I/O Control from the Controls»I/O
palette.
You can use the FieldPoint
Express block in LabVIEW 7.0 to write Express VIs. To read more about the new
Express block, refer to the FieldPoint LabVIEW Interface Help. To use it,
select FieldPoint
from the Functions»Input
or the Functions»Output
palette.
FieldPoint 4.0 has
added DHCP support for [c]FP-20xx. DHCP makes it easy to configure and test the
FieldPoint system in different applications. Static IP assignment requires more
user involvement in initial configuration but is more reliable. Refer to the online
help file for details before using DHCP.
The error codes for
FieldPoint 4.0 have improved significantly. Most LabVIEW errors are now
reported as negative numbers. Although most of the old error codes stayed the
same, a few uncommon codes have been changed or rendered obsolete. Refer to the
online help file for a list of new error codes.
Write VI now returns
an error if you write to a read-only FieldPoint channel or try to write a value
that is out of range. In both error cases, the VI does not write the new value
to the channel.
You can now use
multiple .iak files in your host LabVIEW application with FP Open or with
I/O control. This feature is not supported for embedded applications.
FieldPoint 4.0 does
not support the old BridgeVIEW CCDB architecture. The Export to BridgeVIEW
option that was available in FieldPoint Explorer has been rendered obsolete.
You can use the FieldPoint OPC Server for your BridgeVIEW or LabVIEW DSC
applications.
FieldPoint VIs return
GMT timestamps. If you configure your [c]FP-20xx to use daylight savings time with LabVIEW Real-Time
7.0, the timestamps returned by the FieldPoint VIs will be off by one hour
during daylight savings time. For more information, go to ni.com/kb and enter
2X0GRUQ9.
If your [c]FP-20xx is
using LabVIEW Real-Time 7.0 or older, certain conditions can cause a failure of
direct communication between host applications and a remote [c]FP-20xx over
Ethernet. Host applications that communicate directly with a remote [c]FP-20xx
include MAX, DataSocket, OPC, LabWindows™/CVI™, and host LabVIEW
applications using the FieldPoint VIs. This issue affects only host
applications and does not affect LabVIEW RT communication between the
controller and the host computer. All of the following conditions must exist
for this kind of failure to occur:
— Eight or more host machines
are connected to the controller.
— Each host machine is
continuously monitoring FieldPoint I/O.
— Controller and all host
machines are on the same subnet.
Note With
LabVIEW 7.1 and later, up to 25 host computers can monitor I/O on the
controller without causing communication failure.
If you think this
issue might affect one of your applications, refer to the KnowledgeBase article
Monitoring [c]FP-20xx I/O from More than
Eight Host Computers. Go to ni.com/kb and enter 2WSENN5F.
Remote systems are not
visible in MAX if you are using Windows XP Service Pack 1 and have the Windows
XP firewall enabled. This issue has been fixed in Service Pack 2.
If you are deploying a
FieldPoint executable built with LabVIEW 7.0 for systems that do not have
LabVIEW installed, you should install the LabVIEW support from the FieldPoint
installation CD.
To create a FieldPoint
executable using LabWindows/CVI, you must include FPCVIMgr.DLL in the distribution kit. By default this
file is installed in the \WINNT\system32 folder for Windows 2000/NT/XP.
The .iak file created
in MAX also needs to be included with the FieldPoint distribution kit.
The latest FieldPoint
OPC server supports version 2.04 of the OPC Interface Specifications.
NOTE: The return value
for tags of type VT_BOOL has changed from +1 to -1 (0xFFFF - VARIANT_TRUE) to
comply with the OPC specifications. All discrete input and output items (except
the "All" item) for FieldPoint channels are defined to be of type
VT_BOOL. If you have an OPC application that checks for data values strictly
equal to +1 for discrete items, change it to check for -1 or for a non-zero
value (recommended).