[Greg McKaskle]

I believe the imaging tool is installed with either development tool. In LV it is exposed in the Tools menu, and I assume in WR in the Start menu. The imaging tool goes through a sequence of setting IPs of the computer and cRIO and ftp-ing files down. The files include drivers to allow peek and poke and other modifications, drivers for configuring the backplane and flashing the FPGA. It includes the runtime libraries for LV, for vision, for the OS itself. It includes the bitfile of the FPGA.

You will not need a crossover cable as long as the PC has an auto-sense port, most do. You will probably want to plug into port 1 on the cRIO. The ports will be on different subnets with different IP addresses, so as long as the computer matches, it would work, but for adding the camera or getting used to the routine, use one.

As for how LV works, the files on the cRIO are PPC code attached to some other pieces of the VI. If you were to ftp Intel files to the cRIO, they wouldn't run. If you upload them to the PC, they may or may not open, it depends on if elements such as the panel or diagram were stripped during the build. A VI is a collection of elements such as panel, diagram, description and settings, and executable code. What you can do with a VI depends on what the author left in it.

Greg McKaskle