Setup of NI-TimeSync with MAX in LabVIEW 2010

[Tim_Maddux]

Hi,

I have a set of PXI systems running LabVIEW 2010 RT and want to start using NI-TimeSync for my timestamping.   My systems have NI-TimeSync 1.0.1 installed and NI-Sync 3.2.1 installed.  I have a system with a PXI-6682 card in slot 2, and have succesfully gotten it to pull time from a GPS antenna.

When I go to MAX on any of these systems, I briefly see "Searching for time synchronization sources..." in the Time Settings tab, and then nothing.  I don't see the fields shown in this screen shot:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/11466

What am I missing?

[Tim_Maddux · Accepted solution]

Replying to my own message, it sounds like this isn't currently supported in NI-TimeSync 1.0.1 in MAX and won't be until the next release of NI-TimeSync.

[viScience]

There is a known bug in Ni-SYNC 3.2.1 that prevents MAX from working correctly in some cases.  I spent 4 days racking my brain over this issue and spent many hours on the phone with useless AE's from NI only to find that NI knew about this bug but did not tell anyone about it.  Instead they went to work on a NI-SYNC 3.2.2 fix/release which I had to get by begging a program manager to put it up on the ftp site.

[viScience]

Oh yeah here is the link, but don't tell anyone...

ftp://ftp.ni.com/outgoing/TimingAndSync/

[Magma]

This has been moved to http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2203/lang/en. Were your issues restricted to RT, or not?

[mr_]

Hi all-  it looks like there are two different issues occurring in this thread.

1. Tim Maddux; I believe you are referring to the Developer Zone tutorial that highlights some features we are scheduling for a future release of NI-TimeSync. We did place this one the web a bit early, but I'm glad you were able to find the material and start investigating the possibilities. You should be able to utilize those "views" in the near future 😉
2. sachsm; I think you are referring to an issue where the PXI-6682 would not appear in MAX even with NI-Sync installed. This issue could intermittently (or more frequently as in your case) occur for our customers as it depended on how Windows loaded certain services. At a low-level, it was like a race condition that we were able to prevent by removing some dependencies. Regardless, you can either restart the nitsu service when you experience this issue or you can upgrade your driver to NI-Sync v3.2.2.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

[Tim_Maddux]

Despite the lack of a UI for configuration at this time, it appears that NI-TimeSync 1.0.1 runs anyway.  I have gotten our GPS antenna on the roof.  The only stumbling block I hit was that it wanted to run the 1588 over the Ethernet connection on the PXI-6682 card, not on the PXI controller itself.  Once I got that sorted, everything started to function automatically, and I'm now getting timestamps within 2ms or so in end-to-end tests over a switched network with pretty long patch cable runs (some over 100m).

[mr_]

Hey folks-  NI-TimeSync v1.1 has been released!

NI-TimeSync 1.1 - Real-Time OS, Windows XP x86/Vista/7

http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2231/lang/en