I've a distant cFP unit that needs an update to the VIs running on it. App Builder (LV7.1) has options to prompt for an RT target, so I bundled it all up into an .exe to ship to the client, who then ran it and selected the cFP unit. It downloaded without error, but following a cFP reboot the old app is still there.

Is there a way to get an executable I can send to the client which permanently updates cFP in the same way as when I run App Builder on a PC local to the cFP unit and build directly to cFP? The way I've tried so far seems to be akin to targetting Labview at cFP, loading the VIs and then selecting "Exit without closing RT Engine VIs".

I'm not sure of a way to do it programmatically while loading an exe, but you could just get them to use IE to ftp into the cFP and rename the old exe using windows and delete it, then do the install again.

Neville.

I am using LabVIEW 8.2.1 for programming cFP and the only way to upgrade the VI on cFP is by building EXE and setting the EXE as "startup" before deploying. I am pretty sure that it should be possible on LabVIEW 7.1 too. Setting as "startup" and deploying will configure the cFP to run the EXE on power up. This way, you do not have to "Exit without closing RT Engine VIs". Also, cFP power reset will not matter.

I am also looking around for programatically upgrading software of cFP, so that multiple cFPs can be upgraded from a PC on same network.

--- Ashish

Yeah, using App Builder on the machine having set the LabVIEW execution target to cFP gives you that startup option and installs straight to cFP. As far as I can tell, though, there's no way of getting that option if you don't have the target cFP connected.

There's unofficially a dev environment still installed down there that I shoved on for debugging, so for the moment I can talk him through App Builder on the phone, but if we can't officially update a cFP installation without going down with a full development system then it's a mark against using them in future. Specs and requirements change!

Re using IE to go in and delete the existing exe- that'll just stop it doing anything from power on until the App Builder exe shoves the transient runtime code down.

Thanks for the responses- least it seems I'm not missing something stoopid

Uhh.. I think thats a bit of over-reaction. Like I said before, its trivial to replace an exe (of the same name) with a new one on any of NI's real-time platforms. You don't need a full-blown development environment to download the code.

Do it manually through IE, or use the FTP functions in NI-MAX, or else you could use the Internet Toolkit VI's to build your own application that

1 renames the original app (so it can be deleted)
2 deletes the remote app
3 downloads the new app
4 reboots the cFP so that the new codes starts running.







Well, I'm not sure what your upto, but how else do you expect to replace a running exe?? You will have to stop it momentarily to replace and then reboot to run the new app. Again if you replace the file with IE you don't need the app builder etc.

Just send them the new startup.exe file and ask them to replace in the ni-rt/startup folder by dragging & dropping and thats it.


Neville.

This post has been edited by Neville D: Nov 27 2007, 05:42 PM

We have used a method similar to what Neville has been discribing in LabVIEW 8.2.1. That method should work right up until you want to change the IP address. If you serach through all of the files on the RT node, you will find a couple of files that have the IP address. Just mod those files before writting to the FP and you are off and running.

Ben

There are two ways for doing this. One is with a simple FTP client uploading the file to the cFP replacing the original one. I haven't used that yet. Another one is to use the RT System Replication VI library available on NIs site. With that you can build a LabVIEW app to install, control, and upload new RT exe files on the target. In one case recently I simply built that library into the system configuration for the host application. User simply puts a new exe in a special directory on the host, goes in there presses "update remote system", et voila.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Your right.. I forgot to mention, I built my own tool that does that as well as reboots the targets, reads remote ini settings, opens remote front panels, ftp's remote files to and from the targets automatically etc. I just call the NI utility (suitably modified) into a sub-panel of my main utility and go from there.

One downside of the NI library is that many of the VI's are locked, so minor adjustments in some cases are not possible.

Still its pretty usable.


Neville.