This document contains installation and programming considerations, a list of changes in this version of NI-Motion, and a list of NI-Motion known issues.
Installation and Configuration Instructions
NI-Motion 7.6 Changes and Enhancements
NI-Motion 7.6 General Considerations
Previous NI-Motion Changes and Enhancements
NI-Motion 7.6 is the motion control software you use to communicate with all National Instruments motion controllers using LabVIEW, C, LabWindows™/CVI™, or Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 development platforms. Refer to KnowledgeBase article 39DA8HMU, Does the NI-Motion Driver Support Visual Studio .NET?, at ni.com/kb for information about Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 support.
NI-Motion 7.6 is compatible with the following National Instruments software:
If you have developed motion control systems using a previous version of NI-Motion, you must recompile your code before it will work correctly with NI-Motion 7.6.
In addition, any applications you build in NI-Motion 7.6 will not work correctly in earlier versions of NI-Motion. Similarly, configuration settings you build and save in Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) with NI-Motion 7.6 will not work with applications you build in earlier versions of NI-Motion.
To use NI-Motion 7.6 with a real-time target, you must reinstall the NI-Motion driver software on the real-time target system using MAX. Driver versions on the host and target system must be the same for proper operation. Refer to the Measurement & Automation Explorer Remote Systems Help by selecting Help»Help Topics»Remote Systems in MAX for information about installing software on the remote system.
The following sections include important information about installing NI-Motion 7.6, instructions for downloading and installing NI-Motion 7.6 from the Web or from the CD, and information about NI-Motion firmware.
Note NI-Motion 7.6 is supported on Microsoft Windows Vista/XP/2000. If you are using Windows Me/98/NT, do not upgrade to NI-Motion version 7.6. Continue using NI-Motion version 6.1.x.
Tip For optimal performance, update your operating system to the latest service pack and apply all security patches. This is especially important on Windows 2000 systems. Refer to KnowledgeBase article 45O8JNHR at ni.com/kb for more information.
Complete the following steps to install this update:
Complete the following steps to install this update:
For optimal performance, ensure that the firmware on your controller matches the driver version you install. Complete the following steps to replace the firmware on your controller if you need to use an earlier version of the NI-Motion software and firmware:
NI-Motion 7.6 is fully supported on LabVIEW 8.5.
You may need to update existing CVI projects to reflect these changes.
In previous versions of NI-Motion, the stepper output of a follower/slave gearing axis could be incorrectly generated, causing missing steps. This problem has been fixed in NI-Motion 7.6.
NI-Motion 7.6 now allows an encoder to be controlled independently of the axis owning the encoder as long as the axis is disabled.
In previous versions of NI-Motion, using a crossover cable with a remote target could cause the driver to be unable to communicate with a mapped device. This problem has been fixed in NI-Motion 7.6.
It is now possible to repair the NI-Motion installation from the CD on a Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit system.
In previous versions of NI-Motion, several reference links in the help documents did not open properly. This problem has been fixed in NI-Motion 7.6.
Importing motion controller settings from older portable configuration files may take a few minutes due to the settings upgrade process. This is expected behavior.
Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005 do not allow C++ precompiled header files to be used with C source files. Disable precompiled headers when running NI-Motion C examples.
When you run setup.exe to install the software from the CD, you are prompted to choose whether you want to always trust software from National Instruments. If you do not select this option, your installation may be interrupted by one or more Microsoft Windows security dialog boxes. However, if you run setup from the command line, you will not receive this prompt, and the installer will automatically install NI's Software Publisher Certificate to the Windows Trusted Publisher Store. If you do not want to make this change to your Windows Trusted Publisher Store, do not choose this installation method.
The following table lists the expected firmware files that ship with NI-Motion 7.6.
| Firmware Sector |
Version Number | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NI 7330 | NI 7340 | NI 7350 | NI PCI-7390 | |
| 68331 | 7.40.3001 | 7.40.3001 | 7.40.3001 | 7.40.3001 |
| DSP | 7.30.3001 | 7.30.3001 | 7.30.3001 | 7.30.3001 |
| FPGA1 | 7.00.3001 | 7.00.3001 | 7.10.3001 | 7.00.3014 |
| FPGA2 | 7.00.3001 | 7.00.3001 | — | — |
When you upgrade NI-Motion 5.0.1 to NI-Motion 7.6, your controller does not use the initialization settings you configured and saved in MAX prior to installing NI-Motion 7.6. To use your old initialization settings, you must change back to the old settings using the Change Current Settings feature in the Initialization Settings wizard in MAX. Refer to Measurement & Automation Explorer Help for Motion for information about changing device settings.
Tip Click Help»Help Topics»NI-Motion»NI-Motion Configuration Help to launch Measurement & Automation Explorer Help for Motion.
Do not use the Load Target Position VI/function when your controller is in velocity mode. Loading a target position while operating in velocity mode may result in unexpected behavior.
Switching buffer resources using Configure Buffer to perform two sequential contour moves does not work as expected with a vector space. When Configure Buffer is called two times in a row with different resources, the first contoured move is executed as expected but the second one is either not executed at all in cases where total points is the same as buffer size or it moves to some random position in cases where total points is greater than buffer size. To correct this problem, call Stop Motion between the first and second call to Configure Buffer.
When updating to NI-Motion 7.6 from NI-Motion 7.2.1, if you have previously imported settings for the NI 7344 controller using NI Portable Configuration files (.nce files), you must reimport the NI 7344 controller settings after you update to NI-Motion 7.6.
Symptoms of this issue that appear after updating to NI-Motion 7.6 are receiving error -70038 (NIMC_internalSoftwareError) when you initialize the controller and the Control Loop Settings tab not appearing in MAX.
Using a blend factor greater than 0 when performing arc moves on two vector spaces simultaneously may cause one vector space to stop prematurely. National Instruments recommends that you do not use a blend factor greater than 0 in this case.
The current version of NI-Motion supports the flex_* API functions but not the NIMC_* functions in Visual Basic 6.0.
Refer to KnowledgeBase article 47CC30FL, NI-Motion Readmes, at ni.com/kb for access to previous NI-Motion readme files, starting with NI-Motion 7.0.
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