Communicating with an LVDS Device Using NI Hardware

Issue Details

I need to communicate with a device that uses the LVDS protocol. Does National Instruments have any product that can do this?

Solution

Our current products that may have the ability to communicate with LVDS are: the NI-6585 with a FlexRIO, the PXIe-6569, and the PXIe 6570.

Please note that using the PXIe-6570 will require you to manually receive and interpret the protocol using Digital Pattern Editor, and will be very high level of effort since all the pins share the same ground. The 6570 can also transmit or receive at 100 Mvectors/S.

Another approach that might be more preferable from a programming standpoint would be to use one of the PXIe-654x cards with an external LVDS buffer circuit or board, since these boards use the NI-HSDIO driver. However, some effort will be required to build the external LVDS buffer circuitry needed in order to convert the differential (LVDS) signals to the single ended DIO lines of the card, and vice versa.

Additional Information

Older NI products that supported communication via LVDS but are now obsolete are the 656x series, and the 655x series which could be configured in LabVIEW to do LVDS.