Reduce Embedded Device Costs with NI Single-Board RIO

Finding the right embedded hardware to deploy quickly is not easy. Traditionally, you would be faced with finding a single-board computer (SBC) with one vendor and then going to another for analog and digital I/O boards. After parts arrive from each vendor, the drivers and integration software effort required to get the entire system communicating stalls actual application development. New NI Single-Board RIO products and LabVIEW embedded software solve this embedded dilemma with eight new NI Single-Board RIO products that combine a real-time processor, a reconfigurable field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and I/O all on one printed circuit board (PCB). The entire board is programmable with NI LabVIEW embedded programming tools including the  LabVIEW FPGA and LabVIEW Real-Time modules and built-in middleware drivers, making prototyping and deploying these new hardware boards a quick and easy process, especially when compared to traditional SBCs.

Figure 1. The new NI Single-Board RIO systems integrate a real-time processor, a reconfigurable FPGA, and I/O on a single PCB. Drivers and integration software are included within LabVIEW development tools.

NI Single-Board RIO products are designed to be easily embedded in high-volume applications that require flexibility, high performance, and reliability. You can choose from eight new NI Single-Board RIO products based on your specific application requirements. You can also expand the functionality of NI Single-Board RIO devices by adding up to three additional C Series modules to an sbRIO-96xx system for any needed additional specialty I/O, such as thermocouple or strain measurements, or specialty buses, such as CAN or RS485.

Table 1. The eight new NI Single-Board RIO devices offer a variety of processor speeds, FPGA sizes, and I/O mixes to fit your application’s needs.

Using the NI RIO Hardware and Software Architecture

To improve the time to market and reliability of industrial machines and embedded devices, National Instruments has created a standard reconfigurable I/O (RIO) hardware architecture designing and building machines and devices. The NI RIO architecture consists of a real-time processor, a reconfigurable FPGA, and C Series I/O modules. With this standard architecture, you can rapidly prototype machines and devices such as industrial monitoring and control machines, medical devices, and robotics equipment. LabVIEW is the software tool that programs the real-time processor and FPGA portions of this flexible, high-performance hardware. Because all of the RIO prototype and deployment hardware platforms share the same hardware architecture, you can reuse LabVIEW code between these platforms, helping you seamlessly migrate from designing a prototype to deploying production systems.

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Figure 2. The NI RIO architecture is packaged in several different form factors, giving you the power to choose the version that best meets your system requirements and volumes. Because the architecture is consistent, you can reuse LabVIEW code on each platform with little or no extra development time or money.

These new sbRIO-96xx products are the latest addition to a suite of NI RIO deployment hardware. NI Single-Board RIO products extend the RIO deployment curve by integrating the entire architecture onto a single board. The NI Single-Board RIO products all have a real-time processor, a reconfigurable FPGA, and a mix and match of onboard analog and digital I/O. In addition, the NI RIO architecture delivers a wide selection of prototyping and deployment hardware. If you require the highest level of performance, including a multicore real-time processor and the ability to have multiple FPGAs within your solution, PXI RIO provides a great option. If an extremely rugged, packaged solution is needed then NI CompactRIO systems are an ideal choice. For embedded applications where size and performance are crucial, the new NI Single-Board RIO products provide a cost-effective solution.

Programming NI Single-Board RIO Products with LabVIEW

The power of programming with LabVIEW lies in its graphical nature. Because functions and loops are represented as objects on a two-dimensional plane, you can easily represent parallel processes on the FPGA or parallel threads on the processor with just a couple of clicks. Most text-based languages represent code as a one-dimensional list of serialized commands, so creating parallel threads can be difficult and convoluted. Finally, because LabVIEW is the one language used to program the real-time processor and FPGA on NI RIO devices, you only have to know one tool to program all aspects of the NI Single-Board RIO embedded systems, versus having to master a slew of development languages, debugging tools, and compilers for traditional embedded platforms.

You can also use the LabVIEW FPGA Module to program the onboard reconfigurable FPGA, where you can implement custom I/O timing, control, and processing. LabVIEW contains built-in data transfer mechanisms to stream data from the processor to the FPGA and from the FPGA to the embedded real-time processor. If you have experience with or a library of existing VHDL or Verilog code, the LabVIEW FPGA Module lets you integrate HDL or netlists within LabVIEW FPGA code. The LabVIEW Real-Time Module is used to program the real-time processor for real-time analysis, postprocessing, data logging, or communicating to a networked host computer. If you have experience with C/C++ programming tools, the LabVIEW Real-Time Module gives you the ability to integrate C/C++ code within LabVIEW Real-Time.

Designing, Prototyping, and Deploying with One Architecture

Traditionally, transitioning from a working prototype phase to the deployment phase when building high-volume machines and devices has been difficult and time-consuming. Using LabVIEW tools with the common high-performance NI RIO architecture of National Instruments hardware deployment platforms, including the new sbRIO-96xx systems for NI Single-Board RIO, there is now an easy solution for moving from prototyping to deployment for high-volume applications.

Watch a video demonstrating how easy it is to get started developing your next embedded system with NI Single-Board RIO.

– Matt Spexarth     

Matt Spexarth is an NI Single-Board RIO product marketing manager. He began working at NI in July 2006 and holds a bachelors of science in electrical engineering from Kansas State University.

– Todd Dobberstein     

Todd Dobberstein is a product manager of industrial and embedded technologies for National Instruments. He began working at NI in March 2002 and holds a bachelors of science in electrical engineering from Kansas State University.

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