I'm interested to see if anyone here has any direct experience with deploying an EXE that was built in LabVIEW on a computer using XPe and, if so, what their experience has been as well as to hear any suggestions they would have re: possible problems.

From my perspective it would also be interesting to know if it would work to build on a XP or Vistas machine and transfer for Xpe.

I use many LabVIEW applications with XPe systems starting from version 7.1 up to the 8.5 (at the moment).

I never had problems with my applications, in one case I use the LabVIEW application as Shell, the only "problem" is that to use LabVIEW EXE you have to install The Runtime Engine and to use LabVIEW drivers you have to install the NI drivers, so you need a big quantity of space on your disk to do this.

Once installed runtime engine and drivers you will find on your system a big quantity of programs and drivers unwanted but it is not so simple to remove the ones you don't use, and you will experience not a great help from NI in this case.

Max

OK, thanks for the follow up. I assume that the essence of the deployment process is setting up how much of the overall XPe "componentry" to include in a disk image. Do you include the LV-built app in that same disk image or is it simply installed on the storage of the deployment unit AS IF that storage were a HD or a regular XP system?

Yes, I agree the NI documentation is not very helpful. Have you found other documentation that was actually helpful?

Thanks again for the follow up.



My understanding is that this is precisely how it would be done perhaps even with a dual boot development system (ie one boot is XPe the other is XP or Vista).

In the first attempt I created, under LabVIEW 7.1, a component with the minimum number of needed drivers (and also someone else that I couldn't remove) and placed in the pre-FBA image of my XPe system; in this case during the FBA the drivers were "installed" and at the end of the FBA the application were installed and MAX settled up with the tasks used.

After this attempt that needed about a couple of monthes for adjustment and test I decided to create a functioning XPe system with all the neede drivers for the installed hardware. Once deployed this system I install the NiDAQ drivers using the standard installation removing as much as possible of unwanted/unused components using the installer created by the application builder.
It is true that in this case I use too much space on the storage but I can't waste so much time every time; the first system was developed in LabVIEW 7.1 and the drivers installed was about 450MB, after my cut I reached a 200MB functioning drivers; now the last version I developed was under LabVIEW 8.5 and a couple of week after the release of my system I discovered an unwanted bug in the version 8.5 of the application builder solved by the 8.51: in this case I had only to update using the new installer, in other case I had to recreate the whole system from the beginning.

Max

P.S. Using XPe I don't use HD but DOM, in this case some more attention has to be payd in the construction on the OS and of the application in order to reduce the number of write on the disk

OK, thanks again for the information. Do you know of any especially useful URLs or other reference sources re: XPe?

I have deployed LabVIEW applications to Advantech touch panel computers running XPe with no problems. I used the build of XPe that Advantech provided for the PC, and just installed the LabVIEW Runtime driver (LV 8.2 at the time), and VISA drivers. Everything ran off a compact flash card (1 or 2GB), so we had lots of room. Overall the process was very smooth and the solution was a success for the application.

Vinny

OK, thanks a lot. That helps clarify it a bit more for me.

If you refer to the development of the XPe OS there are a lot of info on the microsoft website (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa731143.aspx); BTW to create a functioning OS it is not too critical, optimize it is another question.

Max