LabVIEW and Profinet communication – how to combine?

This has been the trending topic of our customer inquiries in recent weeks.

While the capabilities of LabVIEW and NI hardware in the acquisition and output of analog signals are undisputed, the situation is different when it comes to connecting real-time Ethernet buses. Numerous forum discussions and questions from our customers prove this.

For a long time, only third-party hardware was available for the cRIO controllers, which was not only expensive but also difficult to handle (anyone familiar with comparable interfaces, e.g. in TwinCAT, will confirm this). This has now been discontinued. On the PC platform, there is no connection from Industrial Ethernet to LabVIEW at all. However, such an interface is becoming increasingly important for modern networked production.

The solution for the PC: real-time Ethernet cards from Hilscher’s cifX family and LabVIEW libraries by müller+krahmer, which not only exchange data with the card, but also do the necessary data type conversions. A nice side effect: on cifX, EtherCAT, SERCOS III and other real-time Ethernet buses are also available. And whether the LabVIEW application is the master or slave in the network can also be determined by the cifX firmware.

And we are currently working on a similar solution for cRIO …

CONTACT:
Holger Mueller
Email: mueller@mueller-krahmer.de
Mobile: +49 160 / 287 7294