July 2016
Thank you for using NI-USRP. This file contains important information about NI-USRP and is organized into the following sections:
Installed Software, Documentation, and Examples
Finding Examples and Sample Projects
NI Software Support for Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003
Product Security and Critical Updates
Uninstalling/Modifying NI-USRP
Automating the Installation of NI Products
Using NI Software with Microsoft Windows 10
Using NI Software with Microsoft Windows 8.1
NI-USRP 16.0 adds support for LabVIEW 2016 (32- and 64-bit).
NI-USRP 15.5 includes the following new features:
NI-USRP 15.1 adds support for LabVIEW Communications 2.0.
NI-USRP 15.0 adds support for LabVIEW 2015 (32- and 64-bit).
NI-USRP 14.5.1 adds support for several bug fixes.
NI-USRP 14.5 includes the following new features:
NI-USRP 14.1 includes the following new features:
NI-USRP 14.0 adds support for LabVIEW 2014 (32- and 64-bit).
The following hardware products are supported under Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit*), Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit*), and Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit*) operating systems.
* These software versions run within the 32-bit emulation layer, Windows on Windows (WOW64), or in a native 64-bit process.
† These devices are supported only in LabVIEW Communications System Design software.
** The NI-USRP instrument driver supports UBX, CBX, CBX-120, WBX, WBX-120, SBX, SBX-120, and XCVR2450 daughterboards. Other daughterboards may also be compatible, but they have not been tested.
Device-specific information about these modules is included in the NI-USRP Help.
1 NI software installs VC2015 Runtime and .NET 4.6.1. Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 require Microsoft updates to support these items. Refer to Microsoft KB2919442 and KB2919355 for more information about how to install these updates.
2 NI software is signed with a SHA-256 certificate. Windows 7 SP1, Windows Embedded Standard 7 SP1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 require Microsoft updates to support SHA-256. Refer to Microsoft KB3033929 for more information about how to install this security update.
Note NI-USRP 16.0 and later does not support Windows Server non-R2 editions.
NI recommends that you have the most recent service pack for your operating system installed.
Note You should install ADEs, such as NI LabVIEW or LabVIEW Communications System Design software, before installing NI-USRP 16.0. To add support for ADEs installed after installing NI-USRP, modify your NI-USRP installation or launch the NI-USRP installer again.
| Note | $(IVIROOTDIR32) is configured as an environment variable on the target system. |
If you upgraded an installation of IVI, your files may be located in the following location:
|
| Note | $(IVIROOTDIR64) is configured as an environment variable on the target system. |
| Item | Installed Location |
|---|---|
| NI-USRP | <NIDir32>\NI-USRP\ |
| NI-USRP Utilities | <NIDir32>\NI-USRP\utilities\ |
| NI-USRP Examples | <NIDir32>\LabVIEW<version>\examples\instr\niUSRP\ |
| NI-USRP Header files | <NIDir32>\Shared\ExternalCompilerSupport\C\include |
| NI-USRP Import Library files | <NIDir32>\Shared\ExternalCompilerSupport\C\lib32\msvc |
| NI-USRP DLL | <SystemDir32>\niusrp.dll |
| NI-USRP 2 DLL | <SystemDir32>\niusrp2.dll |
| NI UHD DLL | <SystemDir32>\niuhd.dll |
| NI UHD 2 DLL | <SystemDir32>\niuhd2.dll |
| NI USRP RIO DLL | <SystemDir32>\niusrprio.dll |
| NI USRP RIO RPC | <SystemDir32>\niusrpriorpc.exe |
| NI USRP USB Monitor | <SystemDir32>\niusrpmonitor.exe |
| NI-USRP Firmware and FPGA images | <NIDir32>\NI-USRP\images\ |
| Item | Installed Location |
|---|---|
| NI-USRP | <NIDir64>\NI-USRP\ |
| NI-USRP Header files | <NIDir32>\Shared\ExternalCompilerSupport\C\include |
| NI-USRP Import Library files | <NIDir32>\Shared\ExternalCompilerSupport\C\lib64\msvc |
| NI-USRP DLL | <SystemDir64>\niusrp.dll |
| NI-USRP 2 DLL | <SystemDir64>\niusrp2.dll |
| NI UHD DLL | <SystemDir64>\niuhd.dll |
| NI UHD 2 DLL | <SystemDir64>\niuhd2.dll |
| NI USRP RIO DLL | <SystemDir64>\niusrprio.dll |
| NI-USRP Examples (NI LabVIEW 2016 only) | <NIDir64>\LabVIEW 2016\examples\instr.lib\niUSRP\ |
Documentation for NI-USRP is located at Start»All Programs»National Instruments»NI-USRP»Documentation. The documentation set is composed of the following documents.
| Document | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NI-USRP Help | HTML/Windows Help | The primary document for most NI USRP products. The help is an HTML version of a traditional user manual that includes the following information:
|
| NI USRP-292x Getting Started Guide | Printed and PDF | Contains software and hardware installation, NI MAX configuration, signal connection, and troubleshooting information for your USRP-292x device. |
| NI USRP-293x Getting Started Guide | Printed and PDF | Contains software and hardware installation, NI MAX configuration, signal connection, and troubleshooting information for your USRP-293x device. |
| NI USRP-294x Getting Started Guide | Printed and PDF | Contains software and hardware installation, NI MAX configuration, signal connection, and troubleshooting information for your USRP-294x device. |
| NI USRP-295x Getting Started Guide | Printed and PDF | Contains software and hardware installation, NI MAX configuration, signal connection, and troubleshooting information for your USRP-295x device. |
| NI USRP-2900/2901 Getting Started Guide | Printed and PDF | Contains software and hardware installation, signal connection, and troubleshooting information for your USRP-2900 or USRP-2901 device. |
| Specifications for your device | Lists technical specifications for your device. | |
| NI-USRP 16.0 Readme | HTML (this document) | Contains information about supported hardware and operating systems, new features, fixed issues, and legal notices. |
To access the LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite 2.0 Manual, visit ni.com/info and enter the Info Code exudg7. This manual includes the following information:
For the most recent revisions of documentation and for newly released documentation, visit ni.com/manuals.
Note To view PDFs, you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. You can install the viewer from www.adobe.com/reader.
NI–USRP palette VIs are available from the Functions»Instrument I/O»Instrument Drivers»NI-USRP palette.
USRP RIO palette VIs are available from the Functions»Instrument I/O»Instrument Drivers»USRP RIO palette.
NI-USRP includes several example applications for LabVIEW. These examples serve as interactive tools, programming models, and as building blocks in your own applications. NI-USRP includes examples for getting started and other software-defined radio (SDR) functionality. You can access the NI-USRP examples from the following locations:
Note The NI Example Finder does not include NI-USRP examples.
USRP RIO includes several sample projects for LabVIEW. These sample projects serve as starting points to build a USRP RIO streaming application. To access the LabVIEW sample project from the Create Project dialog, select Sample Projects in the left pane and navigate to the NI-USRP Simple Streaming project.
You can access additional examples from the Code Sharing Community at ni.com/usrp.
With this release, NI-USRP drops support for Microsoft Windows 7 RTM (with no service pack), Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. NI-USRP 16.0 and later will not install or run on an unsupported OS. You cannot deploy or distribute applications that use NI-USRP 16.0 to an unsupported OS. Additionally, after installing NI-USRP 16.0, you cannot use any installers built on this computer with any version of LabVIEW, LabWindows™/CVI™, NI TestStand™, or Measurement Studio on an unsupported OS.
Visit ni.com/security to view and subscribe to receive security notifications about National Instruments products. Visit ni.com/critical-updates for information about critical updates from National Instruments.
NI-USRP versions are now aligned with the versions of major NI application software products. This alignment gives you information about the year the driver was released and the most recent software version the driver was designed to work with. Driver versions now start with a two-digit year indicator: <ProductName><Year-BasedVersion>. For example, NI-USRP 16.0 is the version released with LabVIEW 2016. The last version released under the old numbering scheme is NI-USRP 1.3. The first version released under the new numbering scheme is NI-USRP 14.0.
For Windows 7, complete the following steps:
For Windows 10/8.1, complete the following steps:
As part of the NI-USRP 16.0 installation, the following software is installed. To completely remove the NI-USRP 16.0 installation from your system, you must also remove all of the following packages:
Caution Several of the software packages listed above are shared with other NI software packages. If you attempt to remove a piece of software that something else is dependent on, a message launches to warn you about the software dependencies. You can choose to either uninstall all of the software or to leave the shared software installed. If you choose to uninstall the shared software, some of your other NI software may no longer function correctly.
Note Do not attempt to uninstall by manually deleting files.
USRP-294x/295x devices support both 1G Ethernet and 10G Ethernet using the connectors on the device back panel. With the default FPGA image, port 0 is designated for 1G, and port 1 is designated for 10G.
Note The FPGA cannot be modified when the USRP-294x/295x device is connected through Ethernet.
You can access the software and documentation known issues list online. Refer to the NI-USRP 16.0 Known Issues at ni.com/info and enter the Info Code exr6ia for an up-to-date list of known issues in NI-USRP 16.0.
There are no changes in NI-USRP 16.0 from NI-USRP 15.5.
The following items are changes in NI-USRP 15.5 from NI-USRP 15.1.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 544731 | Fixed an issue that caused Rx/Tx samples to be misaligned by 5 ns when synchronizing using the external PPS on a USRP-294x/295x device. |
| 519793 | Fixed an issue that caused two channel acquisitions (Rx) on a single USRP-2901 device to fail to align. |
| 486961 | Fixed an issue that caused the niUSRP Find Devices VI to occasionally return incorrect information when a session is open to a USRP device. |
| 466351 | Fixed an issue that caused "A stream command was issued in the past" or "Packet had timestamp that was late (or too early)" errors to occur with MIMO synchronization. |
There are no changes in NI-USRP 15.1 from NI-USRP 15.0.
The following items are changes in NI-USRP 15.0 from NI-USRP 14.5.1.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 544473 | Fixed an issue that caused the niUSRP Configure Frequency Shift VI to incorrectly negate the Tx shift when the scope was "all". |
The following items are changes in NI-USRP 14.5.1 from NI-USRP 14.5.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 546871 | Fixed an issue that caused the Reference Clock PLL in the FPGA to fail to lock to the internal source. |
| 545660 | Fixed an issue that caused the signal to degrade after you install NI-USRP 14.5. |
The following items are changes in NI-USRP 14.5 from NI-USRP 14.1.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 528168 | Fixed an issue that caused channels to fail to align during a two-channel Rx using the USRP-2900 or USRP-2901. |
| 506448 | Fixed an issue that caused multiple Rx channels to fail to align when you use USRP RIO and NI-USRP VIs. |
| 494912 | Fixed an issue that caused NI-USRP not to accept RIO aliases for USRP devices that use PCI Express. |
| 492685 | Fixed an issue that caused the niUSRP Open Rx Session VI to take a long time to execute after you run the niUSRP Open Tx Session VI followed by the niUSRP Configure Signal VI. |
| 492219 | Fixed an issue that caused a Tx underflow error when you start Rx after Tx. |
| 489197 | Fixed an issue that caused an LO locking error on channel 1 when you query an attribute from the NI-USRP driver before you configure any parameters. |
| 470359 | Fixed an issue that caused bad or empty GPS NMEA strings to return when queries are made in a random wait iterative fashion. |
| 456805 | Fixed an issue that caused the niUSRP Get Time VI to return a value of 1 instead of 0 in the fractional seconds output. |
| 311843 | Fixed an issue that caused the USRP-2920 and USRP-2921 devices to coerce the carrier frequency incorrectly. |
The following items are changes in NI-USRP 14.1 from NI-USRP 14.0.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 510807 | Fixed an issue that caused NI-USRP to hang if an empty array was passed to the niUSRP Write Tx Data (poly) VI. |
| 489197 | Fixed an issue that caused a LO locking error to occur on channel one on your USRP-294x/295x devices. |
The following items are changes in NI-USRP 14.0 from NI-USRP 1.3.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 488044 | Fixed an issue that caused clocks derived from the Data Clock to result in invalid data due to the Data Clock changing rate. Refer to KB 6OBBPOR4 on ni.com. |
| 484898 | Fixed an issue that caused incorrect reference level settings when you configure the Rx reference level on USRP-294x/295x devices. |
| 465859 | Fixed an issue that caused errors when you configure two sessions in LabVIEW to the same device in parallel fashion. |
You can automate the installation of most NI products using command-line arguments to suppress some or all of the installer user interface and dialog boxes. However, starting with the August 2012 releases (products using NI Installers version 3.1 or later), you may need to perform additional steps before or during a silent installation of NI software.
If the NI product you are installing uses Microsoft .NET 4.0, the .NET installer may run before any NI software installs and may require a reboot before the installation of NI software begins. To avoid a .NET reboot, install .NET 4.0 separately before you install NI software.
For more information about automating the installation of NI products, refer to the following KnowledgeBase articles:
Microsoft Windows 10 is the latest version of the Windows operating system and features significant changes compared to previous versions. Windows 10 introduces several new capabilities and also combines features from both Windows 7 and Windows 8. For more information about NI support for Windows 10, visit ni.com/windows10.
When you install National Instruments software on Microsoft Windows 8.1, you will notice a few additional tiles in the Apps view, including shortcuts to NI application software products such as NI LabVIEW, Measurement & Automation Explorer (NI MAX), and NI Launcher. For more information about NI support for Windows 8.1, visit ni.com/windows8.
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