You can develop your application using any gRPC-supported programming language.

gRPC is an open-source remote procedure call (RPC) framework that supports several programming languages, such as Python, Java, and C#. Refer to gRPC Open Source Framework for more information.

Getting Started with DST gRPC

The DST gRPC protocol buffer files offer a programming interface for server communication within the DST software. There are separate protocol buffer files for the DST, DSTA, and DSTG services. The files use the same naming conventions as the DST LabVIEW API.

DST installs the protocol buffer files to the following locations:

  • DST—<Program Files>\National Instruments\NI-DST\Application\Protofiles\dst_service.proto
  • DSTA—<Program Files>\National Instruments\NI-DST\Application\Protofiles\dsta_service.proto
  • DSTG—<Program Files>\National Instruments\NI-DST\Application\Protofiles\dstg_service.proto

    • Using the DST LabVIEW API Through gRPC

    If you are using the DST LabVIEW API as a gRPC client, you must use the option string to configure the gRPC connection.

    Use the option string to configure the gRPC connection during DST Initialize, DSTA Initialize, or DSTG Initialize.

    The following is an example of a basic option string for configuring DST in gRPC remote:

    remote=true,ip_address=localhost,port=50066,certification_path=””

    gRPC Python Example

    DST installs an example gRPC Python script for generation and acquisition. Find the examples in the following locations:

  • CW Generation—<Program Files>\NI\LVAddons\niDST\1\examples\niDST\python\getting-started-dstg-cw.py
  • IQ Acquisition—<Program Files>\NI\LVAddons\niDST\1\examples\niDST\python\getting-started-dsta-iq.py

    • Best Practices

    Using gRPC to acquire complex signals might result in lower performance because protobuf serialization and deserialization of complex data types is time-consuming. For the best performance, NI recommends using the interleaved data acquisition gRPC calls provided in the proto file. Using these calls instead of the complex data acquisition calls can increase performance significantly.

    Unsupported DST gRPC Features

    DST doesn't support the following features when using gRPC:

    • The DST Instrument Studio panel doesn't support functioning as a gRPC client. You can use the panel only on the instrument controller instance.
    • DST doesn't support streaming capability.
    • DST doesn't support the DST Get Reference API.
    • DST doesn't support the following property nodes:
      • Set streaming waveform name
      • Get streaming waveform space
      • Set streaming write timeout
      • Get streaming write timeout
      • Set pretrigger samples
      • Get fpga interface
      • Get instruction target ref
      • Get subsystem map