See cRIO 9064 in Measurement and Automation but not in Project Explorer

[Mariusjuv]

I’m new to the NI suite

I’m trying to connect two daisy chained Ethernet AKD motors to NI DAQmx

NI has a video explaining how to, but in the video the cRIO is showing in Project Explorer window when he starts.

I have tried to search for it under remote systems, but nothing shows?

Could anyone point me in the right direction?

I have added a screenshot 

[GerdW]

Hi Marius,

you need to add the cRIO as (new) target to your project - as is explained in the RIO basics tutorial...

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@Mariusjuv wrote:

I’m trying to connect two daisy chained Ethernet AKD motors to NI DAQmx

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Your cRIO doesn't provide any DAQmx capabilities...

[StevenD]

Too add to this, are you referring to Kollmorgen AKD drives? If you are connecting to them with Ethernet, they use TCP/IP for communication, not DAQmx.

[Mariusjuv]

Thx to both of you.

Yes, there are 2 Kollmorgen AKD motors, but their (Kollmorgen) interface uses Silverlight from Microsoft on the Admin webpage. Microsoft stopped supporting that last year, so my browser doesn’t get that page up., but that’s some workaround I hope.

Right so the cRIO is “outside” of the NI DAQ? - I need perhaps download the cRIO drivers from the NI launch manager also then?

Thats why there are two USB’s out of this prototype, does that make sense?

sorry for the newbie questions here, just trying to get my head around this.

[StevenD]

The AKD's I have used have a X11 Ethernet port that supports Modbus RTU. I don't know what you communicated before, but there is a section at the end of the User Guide with some of the registers you can read/write.

[GerdW]

Hi Marius,

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@Mariusjuv wrote:

Yes, there are 2 Kollmorgen AKD motors, but their (Kollmorgen) interface uses Silverlight from Microsoft on the Admin webpage. Microsoft stopped supporting that last year, so my browser doesn’t get that page up., but that’s some workaround I hope.

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Then you should ask Kollmorgen for some new drivers/firmware for their hardware…

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@Mariusjuv wrote:

Right so the cRIO is “outside” of the NI DAQ? - I need perhaps download the cRIO drivers from the NI launch manager also then?

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This specific kind of cRIO (906x) does NOT support DAQmx, only more recent cRIO revisions (904x, 905x) support DAQmx…

To be able to program that cRIO you need the LabVIEW-Realtime module - and preferrably the LabVIEW-FPGA module too. (And still then the cRIO does not support DAQmx…)

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@Mariusjuv wrote:

Thats why there are two USB’s out of this prototype, does that make sense?

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Which "prototype" are you talking about?

The cRIO9064 only provides one USB host and one USB device port: they are used for different tasks as explained in the manual!

And how do those USB ports relate to your question about Kollmorgen drives???

[Mariusjuv]

Never used that Modbus rtu protocol, I’m a software developer so I’m writing everything in Python, but I understand that NI and Kollmorgen are large players, so I need to adapt a bit.

The solution also have an ATI torque sensor which was quite easy to connect to via the NI DAQ box, so I hoped for something similar with these motors via the python library NI has made.

My second option is to make a “connector” via Labview and access the motors via Labview runtime.

[Mariusjuv]

That made a lot of sense to me. It cleared a few things.

however, I’m following this manual 

https://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/375516e.pdf

Is that the one you refer to?

[GerdW]

Hi Marius

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@Mariusjuv wrote:

That made a lot of sense to me. It cleared a few things.

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It really would help to understand that sentence when you would cite a quote from an older message so we could see what you are referring to!

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@Mariusjuv wrote:

however, I’m following this manual 

https://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/375516e.pdf

Is that the one you refer to?

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Again: who is "you" you are referring to?

Are you using those 9514 modules? You did not mention them until now…

[Mariusjuv]

Hi GerdW

it was your comments that made a lot of sense. I installed this LabVIEW-Realtime module, and then the CompactRIO appeared under Remote System in Measurement & Automation. 

So one step further.

When it comes to the manual. I did not know better that there were large differences between the different numbered modules, so thank you for clearing that.

further I did not understand the purpose with the 2 usb’s so thank you for that as well.

I thought that one was for the Ni DAQ and the other for the motor controls.

if it’s ok, I hope I can ask you a few questions in a day or two. You have given me a lot to investigate. I really appreciate it.