RE: LabVIEW EPICS connection

[<ulrik.pedersen@diamond.ac.uk>]

Hi Steve,

 

A while ago (a couple of years) I went through this process and tried out a few different EPICS-LabVIEW integration libraries. My first choice was also this NI supplied LabVIEW add-on. However, I had trouble getting this working well:

·         There is a significant lack of documentation even to help you get started, let alone to understand how it does Channel Access I/O.

·         I have had some trouble to get the add-on installed and working – and others have reported the same. See http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/tech-talk/2010/msg00277.php

·         Once running I found that I couldn’t get array/waveform to work (possibly not supported at all)

·         Setting up shared variables is far too complicated for some of our novice LabVIEW users

 

I had a lot better experience with the CA Lab library http://www-csr.bessy.de/control/SoftDist/CA_Lab/ This worked straight out of the box for me and the documentation is excellent to get you started. Also it uses the native EPICS ca and Com libraries and makes the source code available so you can understand how it really works. I recommend going with that for any new project.

 

Cheers,

Ulrik

 

 

From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [mailto:tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Steve Kinder
Sent: 28 June 2012 10:03
To: tech-talk
Subject: LabVIEW EPICS connection

 

I am trying to connect an existing LabVIEW VI to EPICS via the freely available LabVIEW add-on EPICS Client I/O Server (http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2533/lang/en). I am running LabVIEW 2011 and have a 3-14-11 soft IOC running on the same system with a few test PVs. My first aim is to make a connection between these PVs and elements of the LabVIEW VI (currently just a test VI). I wondered whether anyone had successfully used this LabVIEW add-on or the full version as in the DSC/RT add-ons and could offer me advice on how to make the connection.

 

I have the following in my test LabVIEW VI; Create EPICS VI, Deploy EPICS Client VI and List Records VI. I was hoping that the latter would display a list of records in my soft IOC if the connection had been established. I get no errors but it doesn’t seem to display any records.

 

Any advice would be appreciated, perhaps including whether I should be trying to use this LabVIEW add-on or one of the other options e.g. CA Lab or the Oak Ridge CA client.

 

Many Thanks

 

Steve