RF Signal Analyzer Not Detected in NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel but Connected in NI MAX

Issue Details

When I open the NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel (SFP) application, I receive the following message:

No NI RF Signal Analyzers were detected. Open Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX), verify your device is properly installed, and then click Rescan. Otherwise, click Exit.

However, when I open NI Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX), I can see my device is detected properly.

Solution

This symptom most commonly occurs when you are using remote hardware. The NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel (SFP) only scans for local devices, which means that remote hardware will not be detected. To correct this, it is necessary to ensure that the SFP is launched directly from the embedded controller, or from the development machine if using a MXI connection. 

Additional Information

The NI-RFSA SFP supports spectrum analyzer measurements, such as adjacent channel power, occupied bandwidth, third-order intercept (TOI), complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDF), spectral emission mask, and transmit power. Similar to stand-alone RF signal analyzers, the NI-RFSA SFP controls the RF device and analyzes and presents data. However, because the SFP operates on the PC, it provides additional processing, storage, and display capabilities.

You can open multiple instances of the SFP to interact with more than one device. Each instance of the SFP opens as a separate application window.