National Instruments cRIO-9038 CompactRIO Controller

The cRIO‑9038 (Part numbers: 783850-01 and 783850-02) is an embedded Controller manufactured by National Instruments. It is equipped with a Xilinx Kintex-7 160T FPGA. The CompactRIO Controller is featured with 2 GB of DDR3 memory and an 8 GB nonvolatile hard drive. It operates on the Intel Atom E3825 CPU which has a 1.33 GHz dual core processor. The cRIO 9038 consists of 8 slots for C Series I/O modules and is preferred for complex machine control applications. The NI cRIO‑9038 has a combination of advanced performance and capabilities. These features enable the model to merge many common tasks in a single Controller. Consequently, it offers excellent development time with complexity and decreases the system cost. The difference between the two aforementioned cRIO‑9038 part numbers is that part number 783850-02 is conformal coated, while part number 783850-01 is not.

The NI cRIO‑9038 has various LED indicators. These LEDs indicate the Controller’s state while operating in different modes. The green power LED specifies that supply is powered from the V1 input. The yellow LED indicates that supply is powered from the V2 input. The status LED provides indications in 2 colors. When the red LED blinks continuously, it indicates a hardware error. The Controller is in the safe mode when the yellow LED blinks twice and pauses. Continuous blinking of the yellow LED shows the Controller has not booted into NI Linux Real-Time. The momentary blinking of the yellow LED requires no action; the Controller is in the booting process in this state. The cRIO‑9038 has 2 tri-speed RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and weighs 4 lbs. The device has the dimensions: 12.94 x 3.47 x 4.30 in. The device also has a RS-232 serial port featuring an RJ-50, 10-position modular jack for connections to other devices.

The NI cRIO 9038 has two USER LEDs. LabVIEW Real-Time is used to express the USER1 LEDs with the RT LEDs VI. The NI-RIO Device Driver software and LabVIEW FPGA module are used to express the USER FPGA1 LED. These LEDs help retrieve application status or debug the application. The device can be configured using the NI Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) tool.