I developed a Machine Vision system that has worked over a decade without any motion problems. I recently upgraded the computer from Windows XP to Win7; LabVIEW from 7.1 to 2013; TestStand from 4.2 to 2013; NI-Motion from 7.7 to 8.5.1.
At first the system seemed to work fine without any major modifications to the software. But it soon started having problems with Motion and the Motion Control Card (NI PCI-7334):
- When moving the XY Table; the "Check Move Complete Status" vi throws an error and does not wait for the XY table to get to it's destination. The table always does move correctly to the position required. (don't have a record of the error right now)
- I have a LabVIEW program that continually monitors the digital input ports on the PCI-7334 card which stops reading the inputs correctly (they are high; reads low). It also uses one of the ports as an output to control lights and this continues to work.
When either or both of these problems occur, if I check the card in MAX there is a ! point on the icon and it indicates the firmware is out of date. If I initialize the card the exclimation mark dissapears and the firmware is 'Up to Date'. The above problems dissapears; for a while and then the problems repeat.
I know this is a long shot, but any clue what could be happening? I've looked over the VIs closely and don't seem to find a memory leak or race condition. Is it possible that my VI which is monitoring the digital ports continuously is interferring with the operation of the motion? As I said it worked for a decade without this issue before the upgrade.