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

Most National Instruments products that could communicate via LVDS are obsolete. 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 6570 will require you to manually receive and interpret the protocol using Digital Pattern Editor, and will be very high level of effort. 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. The downside of this approach would be that 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

The 656x series was made for LVDS, but this line is now obsolete and cannot be purchased.
The 655x series could be configured in LabVIEW to do LVDS, but it is also obsolete.