Upload Code Via FTP

[penguain]

Is it possible to build/compile the code(in labview)... then 'upload and deploy' the code to the robot via FTP....

if so how?

[dqmot17]

As far as i know, no. It compiles it directly to the bot. One of the things are team did to combat this problem is make it read a text file FTPed to the cRIO.

[TDohse]

Can you give a further explanation of what you want to do and why? What behavior do you need that is different than what is provided by the LabVIEW project?

[kamocat]

If I understand correctly, an FPGA does not actually have its state "burned in". It effectively boots from the non-volatile memory; the 64 MB Flash memory.

I'm assuming your goal is to be able to switch between compiled programs without all the time it takes to deploy.
My suggestion is to deploy it initially, and then FTP it and copy all the files in the cRIO back to your computer and archive them there, so when you want to switch back to that code, you just unzip it, and rewrite the cRIO's memory with it.

To save time, you could probably even determine which folders hold the code, and just replace those, instead of replacing the OS and everything.



EDIT:
For clarity, I'm going to reference a specific document, because there are three ways of deploying code.
http://decibel.ni.com/content/servle..._Framework.pdf
I believe Barry is referring to "Building and deploying a stand-alone application", not "Deploying the program using the run button" nor "Deploying the program from the Project Explorer window".

[Greg McKaskle]

If the point is to be able to switch between a few different deployments, this is determined by the ini file. I could be wrong, and I don't take a cRIO home with me at night, but I believe that you can keep multiple deployments on the cRIO and either rename them, or possibly change the startup app name in the ini. If this is the goal, we can play a bit and publish different ways of doing this.

If the goal is to speed up the LabVIEW download time, some things regarding this have already been done. For instance, the FPGA image is close to 1MB. Last year, it was downloaded each time. This year it is stored on the cRIO.

So, to echo Thomas's question, can you be more specific about the ftp question?

Greg McKaskle