Download the Step-by-Step Procedure PDF
Have you ever wanted to make a robot move, log data for a really long time, or maybe test out the algorithms that control a car all on the same technology that is used by professional engineers in industry every day? Many of these applications use RIO technology from National Instruments.
What Is RIO?
Reconfigurable I/O, or RIO, is technology incorporated in many NI hardware products such as NI Single-Board RIO and CompactRIO. NI RIO technology is based on an FPGA, which is a programmable chip that you can use to create your own custom hardware circuitry. Because FPGAs are reprogrammable circuits, once programmed, an FPGA runs reliably just as though you had placed a circuit on a breadboard. Also, the default clock for FPGAs when programming in LabVIEW is 40 MHz, so any functionality placed on an FPGA runs fast. Finally, because FPGAs are reprogrammable circuits, you can wipe the FPGA clean and program it to do something completely different at any time.
Common RIO Platforms
NI Single-Board RIO and CompactRIO are two popular RIO platforms that feature a processor running a real-time OS in addition to an FPGA.
You can deploy code to the real-time OS to read and write data to and from the FPGA. Code that runs on a real-time OS performs more consistently than code running on Windows OS. Windows OS shares processor time equally between all tasks that are running on your machine, like antivirus software or updates, which is fine for basic DAQ applications. A real-time OS, however, prioritizes running your code, which is critical for control applications in industries such as aerospace, automotive, and robotics. Also, code running on NI Single-Board RIO or CompactRIO doesn’t have to be connected to a host computer, so your robot is free to run around without being connected to a PC.
For this Learn RIO series, use rugged CompactRIO as your hardware platform but remember that these concepts for interacting with this hardware apply to NI Single-Board RIO as well. NI Single-Board RIO is the same technology but just a different form factor.
Now that you understand the basics of RIO technology, you are ready to assemble a CompactRIO system, program it, and use it for a basic application.
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