Limit the number of bitfiles sent to the target

[CyGa]

Hi,

I made a custom device which works as a high-speed digitizer and logger.

It allows handling several FPGA personnalities on several targets.

Today the personnalities are numerous : the deployement takes time and the it wastes hard drive space.

Indeed, the user can choose one personnality in the system definition. However, in the engine code the correct bitfile is called in a case structure where each contains a specific call for each specific personnality.

Which means that VS deploys every bitfile on the target at deployement time, but run only one according to the user choice (passed to the engine with a property).

The user manually choose the personnality at definition time, so I know which bitfile I'll call in the engine before deployement. Is there anyway to limit the transfer to only one bitfile ?

[RandallCrandall'sCandleHandle]

Hey CyGa,

I looked into this, and I think I have something that will work for you.

As a disclaimer, the Open FPGA VI Reference set to Dynamic mode like you're using will require all of the bitfiles to be deployed to the target. However, we realized that this requires additional target resources in 2012, so we released the Open Dynamic Bitfile Reference VI in LabVIEW 2013:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/NI-VeriStand/Limit-the-number-of-bitfiles-sent-to-the-target/m-p/3735104#M5...

The best example I could find of using this VI does not directly apply to your application, but I think it'll be useful to look at:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/Example-Program-Drafts/Load-dynamically-Bitfiles-for-multible-RIO-Devices/t...

I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Ryan C.

[CyGa]

Hi Ryan,

Thank you for this answer. I thought that opening the reference with the 'dynamic'option set was equivalent to using this function. I'll then try it.

I guess that I'll have to create an action VI that downloads the correct bitfile in a specific folder on the target. But I guess I can handle it!

I'll try that in 2018 ! 😉