Installing IVI Support for NI Real-Time Targets

• I do not see the option to install IVI Compliance Package under Add/Remove Software in NI Measurement & Automation Explorer (NI MAX).  How do I install IVI support for my Real-Time target?
• I have a LabVIEW Real-Time PXI controller that I want to use to communicate with and control a non-NI (3rd party) device that is IVI compliant.  I have the IVI driver on my Windows computer and I am able to communicate with and control the 3rd party device smoothly through a LabVIEW VI that I wrote that uses the IVI driver.  However, I am getting a missing DLL error when I try to run the same LabVIEW VI on my RT PXI controller.

There are two situations when you will want to have IVI driver support on your Real-Time target/controller: to control an NI piece of hardware outside of NI software and to control a 3rd party piece of hardware via LabVIEW or other software.  Allowing NI hardware to be controlled by non-NI software via the IVI driver is feasible, but controlling 3rd party hardware with IVI driver support is not a tested configuration on NI Real-Time Controllers.

IVI Driver for NI Hardware

The IVI Compliance Package is installed automatically on your Real-Time target/controller whenever you install any NI Modular Instruments driver, such as NI-DMM, NI Switch, NI-DCPower, NI-HSDIO, NI-435X. This will allow you to control the corresponding hardware via the IVI driver instead of from the NI driver.
 

IVI Driver for 3rd Party Hardware

NI has not tested installing IVI drivers for 3rd party instruments on an NI Real-Time controller.  It is suggested that you communicate with your device through other means such as NI-VISA, NI-Serial, NI-GPIB, etc... 

Additional Information

To get the IVI Compliance Package on your Windows machine, you will need to download and install the IVI Compliance Package from the download page.