Built application can't find DaqMX devices with VISA Find Resource VI

Question

My application programmatically finds all of my PXI devices using the VISA Find Resources VI with the following regular expression:
(PXI[0-9]*::?*INSTR){VI_ATTR_S:LOT >= 0}
This works with my built application on a PXI-8186 controller with LabVIEW installed, but when I created an installer to put it on another PXI-8186 controller without the LabVIEW development system, none of my DaqMX devices show up in my list of VISA resources.  They all show up in MAX, however.  I even tried creating a simple app that just has the routine which gets the resource list.  Ironically, the only PXI device that shows up in the list is a ZT1000PXI made by ZTEC Corp.  I also have a number of PXI-4437s and PXI-6120s in the chassis.  I tried setting the PXI option in MAX to report all PXI devices, not just registered ones, but that had no effect.
This is a Windows 2000 OS running on a PXI-8186, with DaqMX 8.5.0f3 and NI_VISA Runtime V4.1, and LabVIEW Runtime V8.2.1.
Does anyone have a clue why this isn't working? I've tried uninstallng and reinstalling NI-VISA Runtime, but it didn't matter.

Answer 1

Hi wired,
As I understand it, you built an application in LabVIEW 8.2.1 on a PXI-8186 controller. When you moved to a new controller, one without LabVIEW 8.2.1, the program to find your PXI cards returns only a third party device and not your DAQ cards, despite the devices being visible in Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX). You have an Installer for your application that installs the runtime engines for VISA and LabVIEW and the DAQmx driver.  Is my understanding correct?
You mentioned that you had tried setting the PXI option in MAX to report all PXI devices, not just the registered ones. By this, did you mean that you set the VISA option to Show all devices accessible to VISA? If you did not mean this, then I would suggest doing so. In MAX, you can expand the Software tab in the Configuration Tree to the left. By selecting NI-VISA, the VISA options become visible. You should select show all devices accessible to VISA as seen in the attached screenshot.
If you did in fact select this option already, can I ask if you also enabled the NI-VISA tulip Passport? In order to do this, on the VISA Options page, under General Settings, if you select the Passports option a list of checked boxes appear. Select the Tulips option as seen in the second screenshot and then click the Save button at the top of the MAX window. You will then need to close LabVIEW or your application and restart it.
I built a simple program to test this post, and until I followed the above steps, the only devices that appeared were my com ports. After doing this I was able to all of my DAQ cards.
Could you clarify some things for me? When you said that the application works on a PXI-8186 controller with LabVIEW, was this the development machine or just a controller you tried the executable on and it worked? What is in your installer? Is the VISA version on the test controller the same as that on the development machine? And lastly, in MAX, do the DAQ cards appear under DAQmx devices or under PXI systems and can you communicate with them using a test panel?
Good Luck, Mallori M.
Mallori M
National Instruments
Global Customer Education Program Mananger
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Attachments:
Show VISA Accessible.PNG ‏84 KB
Tulip Passport.PNG ‏15 KB