Version 16.0
Thank you for using NI-SWITCH. This file contains important information about NI-SWITCH and is organized into the following sections:
Installed Software, Documentation, and Examples
NI Software Support for Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003
Product Security and Critical Updates
Uninstalling/Modifying NI-SWITCH
Automating the Installation of NI Products
Using NI Software with Microsoft Windows 10
Using NI Software with Microsoft Windows 8.1
NI-SWITCH 16.0 adds support for LabVIEW 2016 (32- and 64-bit).
NI-SWITCH 15.1.1 fixes bugs in NI-SWITCH 15.1.0.
NI-SWITCH 15.1.0 includes the following new features:
Notes
NI-SWITCH 15.0.0 adds support for LabVIEW 2015 (32- and 64-bit).
NI-SWITCH 14.0.0 adds support for LabVIEW 2014 (32-bit) and LabVIEW 2014 (64-bit).
NI-SWITCH 4.8 includes the following new features:
Notes:
NI-SWITCH 4.6.5 adds support for LabVIEW 2013 (32-bit)and LabVIEW 2013 (64-bit).
NI-SWITCH 4.6.1 includes the following new features:
NI-SWITCH 4.6 adds support for the NI PXI-2520, NI PXI-2521, NI PXI-2522, NI PXI-2523, and NI PXIe-2790 modules.
NI-SWITCH 4.5.5 adds support for LabVIEW 2012 (32-bit) and LabVIEW 2012 (64-bit).
NI-SWITCH 4.5 adds support for the NI 2833, NI 2834, NI PXI/PXIe-2532B, NI PXI-2720, NI PXI-2722, NI PXIe-2725, NI PXIe-2727, NI PXI-2796, NI PXI-2797, NI PXI-2798, and NI PXI-2799 modules.
NI-SWITCH 4.4 includes the following new features:
NI-SWITCH 4.3.5 adds support for LabVIEW 2011 (32-bit) and LabVIEW 2011 (64-bit).
NI-SWITCH 4.3 includes the following new features:
NI-SWITCH 16.0 and later supports the following National Instruments switch products:
Notes: NI-SWITCH does not support legacy resource descriptors (SCXI:: and PXI::) under Windows 8/7/Vista.
NI-SWITCH supports the NI USB-1359 under the 32-bit versions of the supported operating systems. NI-SWITCH does not support the NI USB-1359 under the 64-bit versions of the supported operating systems.
NI-SWITCH 16.0 and later support the following operating systems:
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-SWITCH 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.
NI-SWITCH 16.0 and later support the following real-time operating environments:
Note: You should install ADEs, such as NI LabVIEW, NI LabWindows/CVI or Microsoft Visual Studio®, before installing NI-SWITCH. To add support for ADEs installed after installing NI-SWITCH, modify your NI-SWITCH installation or launch the NI-SWITCH 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-SWITCH | <IVIROOTDIR32>\Drivers\niSwitch |
| NI-SWITCH Function Panel | <IVIROOTDIR32>\Drivers\niSwitch\niSwitch.fp |
| NI-SWITCH Examples | <NIDocDir>\NI-SWITCH\examples |
| NI-SWITCH Header files | <IVIROOTDIR32>\Include |
| NI-SWITCH Import Library files (32-bit) | <IVIROOTDIR32>\Lib |
| NI-SWITCH Import Library files (64-bit) | <IVIROOTDIR32>\Lib_x64 |
| NI-SWITCH DLL (32-bit) | <IVIROOTDIR32>\Bin |
| Item | Installed Location |
|---|---|
| NI-SWITCH Function Panel | <IVIROOTDIR64>\Drivers\niSwitch\niSwitch.fp |
| NI-SWITCH Header files | <IVIROOTDIR64>\Include |
| NI-SWITCH Import Library files (64-bit) | <IVIROOTDIR64>\Lib_x64 |
| NI-SWITCH DLL (64-bit) | <IVIROOTDIR64>\Bin |
Documentation for NI Switches is available at Start»All Programs»National Instruments»NI-SWITCH»Documentation. The documentation set is composed of the following documents:
| Document | Format | Description |
| NI Switches Help | HTML/Windows Help | Contains primary help content for NI Switches. The help is an HTML version of a traditional user manual that includes the following information:
|
| Getting Started Guide for your device | Printed and PDF | Contains software and hardware installation, MAX configuration, signal connection, and troubleshooting information for your device. |
| Specifications for your device | Printed and PDF | Lists technical specifications for your device. |
| Calibration Procedures for your device | Contains calibration instructions for your device. | |
| Maintain Forced-Air Cooling Note to Users | Printed | Contains important cooling information for your device. |
| Introduction to NI-SWITCH | HTML | Contains information about driver documentation, examples, connecting to your instrument, configuring instrument settings, and known issues. |
| NI-SWITCH Readme | HTML (this document) | Contains information about supported hardware and operating systems, new features, and legal notices. |
| NI-SWITCH IVI Compliance Document | TXT | Contains information about IVI compliance. |
For the most recent revisions of documentation and for newly released documentation, visit ni.com/manuals.
To use the .NET API, you must install the the .NET class libraries or the .NET Wrapper in addition to the NI device driver. For information about versions of the .NET Framework and the drivers each supports, as well as the download location of the installer files, refer to the National Instruments .NET Driver Support document at ni.com/info and enter Info Code NETAPIdriversupport.
Note To view the specifications, you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. You can install the viewer from www.adobe.com/reader.
In LabVIEW, you can use the NI Example Finder to search or browse examples. NI-SWITCH examples are classified by keyword, so you can search for a particular device or measurement function. In LabVIEW, select Help»Find Examples to launch the NI Example Finder. The NI Example Finder offers two ways to access all installed LabVIEW example VIs and their descriptions:
You can also access all the installed NI-SWITCH examples for LabVIEW and LabWindows/CVI at Start»All Programs»National Instruments»NI-SWITCH»Examples.
With this release, NI-SWITCH drops support for Microsoft Windows 7 RTM (with no service pack), Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. NI-SWITCH 16.0 and later will not install or run on an unsupported OS. You cannot deploy or distribute applications that use NI-SWITCH 16.0 to an unsupported OS. Additionally, after installing NI-SWITCH 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.
For more information about the changes to our OS support for 2016, refer to KB 79UC78LS, Why Does my LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, Measurement Studio, or TestStand Built Installer Fail on Windows XP/Vista and Server 2003?.
National Instruments posts information about critical updates and security notifications on ni.com. Visit ni.com/info, and enter the info code updates to access this information.
NI-SWITCH 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-SWITCH 14.0.0> is the version released with LabVIEW 2014. The last version released under the old numbering scheme is NI-SWITCH 4.8. The first version released under the new numbering scheme is NI-SWITCH 14.0.0.
For Windows 7, complete the following steps:
For Windows 10/8.1, complete the following steps:
As part of the NI-SWITCH installation, the following software is installed. To completely remove the NI-SWITCH 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.
You can access the software and documentation known issues list online. Refer to the NI-SWITCH 16.0 Known Issues at ni.com/info and enter the Info Code exanit for an up-to-date list of known issues in NI-SWITCH 16.0
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 15.1.1 from NI-SWITCH 15.1.0.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 530716 | Fixed issue that caused MAX with NI Switch Executive to hang when users configured RouteGroups with more connections than are normally allowed by the relay drive limit. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.8 from NI-SWITCH 4.6.5.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 412074 | Fixed an issue in which the DAQmx Disconnect All VI returned an error when closing or opening multiple relays. |
| 338542 | Fixed an issue where the DAQmx Stop Task VI would time out. |
| 410401 | Fixed an issue where the NI switch software scanning examples did not work on an RT target. |
| 363694 | Fixed an issue with the Multi-Module Scan List that caused scanning to be incomplete. |
| 410717 | Fixed an issue where relay commands did not execute while using the USB-1359 with SCXI switch modules. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.6.5 from NI-SWITCH 4.6.1.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 408193 | Fixed an issue where calling DAQmx Disconnect (Multiple) on the NI PXI/PXIe-2540 or the NI PXI/PXIe-2541 left one or more relays powered. |
| 393334 | Fixed an issue where resetting the same switch in two or more parallel threads resulted in an error. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.6.1 from NI-SWITCH 4.6.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 372998 | Fixed an issue where the NI 2833/2834 power consumption was not accounted for in the carrier power budget. |
| 373015 | Removed hyphens from the SwitchBlock model strings in the NISWITCH_SUPPORTED_INSTRUMENT_MODELS constant. |
| 373073 | Fixed an issue where the default channel state of the NI PXIe-2790 did not represent the hardware state correctly. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.5 from NI-SWITCH 4.4.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 328251 | Fixed an issue where the NI PXI-2571 did not honor user-defined settling times. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.4 from NI-SWITCH 4.3.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 256580 | Improved Windows 7 performance. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.1 from NI-SWITCH 4.0.2.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 209501 | Fixed an issue that disabled legacy scanning of multiple modules with NI-SWITCH. |
The following items are changes in NI-SWITCH 4.0.1 from NI-SWITCH 4.0.
| ID | Fixed Issue |
|---|---|
| 181045 | Fixed power budget issue for the PXI/PXIe-2515. |
| 181067 | Fixed an issue where calling Device Reset on certain PXI/PXIe devices (NI-PXI/PXIe-2512/2514/2564/2585/2586) incorrectly updated relay count. |
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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End-User License Agreements and Third-Party Legal Notices
You can find end-user license agreements (EULAs) and third-party legal notices in the following locations after installation:
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If you are an agency, department, or other entity of the United States Government ("Government"), the use, duplication, reproduction, release, modification, disclosure or transfer of the technical data included in this manual is governed by the Restricted Rights provisions under Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.227-14 for civilian agencies and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement Section 252.227-7014 and 252.227-7015 for military agencies.
IVI Foundation Copyright Notice
Content from the IVI specifications reproduced with permission from the IVI Foundation.
The IVI Foundation and its member companies make no warranty of any kind with regard to this material, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The IVI Foundation and its member companies shall not be liable for errors contained herein or for incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material.
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Patents
For patents covering the National Instruments products/technology, refer to the appropriate location: Help»Patents in your software, the patents.txt file on your media, or the National Instruments Patent Notice at ni.com/patents.
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