MATLAB: Can I use DAQ boards from National Instruments that use the newer NI-DAQmx driver with MATLAB R13SP1

Data Acquisition Toolbox

I have a National Instruments board this is only supported by the newer NI-DAQmx driver. Can this device be used with MATLAB R13SP1?

Best Answer

It is not possible to support any NI devices that depend on NI's NI-DAQmx drivers in releases prior to R14SP3+. This includes the NI USB-6289 or NI USB-6251. Due to a large number of improvements over the last few years it is highly recommended to use these devices with R2008a (Data Acquisition Toolbox version 2.12).
There are two groups of NI DAQ boards:
Boards supported by Traditional NI-DAQ drivers and those supported by the
modern NI-DAQmx drivers.
Note that NI no longer offers support for the Traditional NI-DAQ drivers and
is not enhancing it in any way to support modern devices.
Each of these NI drivers has its own adaptor; the software we write connects our data acquisition engine to the drivers supplied by the hardware vendor. You can see a nice diagram of this on the first page of the DAT Quick Reference Guide:
 <http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/pdf_doc/daq/daqquickref.pdf>
Look for the box labeled "Hardware driver adaptors".
If the devices of interest are supported only by the NI-DAQmx driver, then they are only supported with our NI-DAQmx adaptor which is mwnidaqmx.dll.
Since our NI-DAQmx support came out only in R14SP3+ (MATLAB 7.1, DAT 2.8), there is no viable option other than to upgrade to a newer release.
When we advertise adding support for devices, we only test the most recent release and cannot guarantee that adding the INI entries to previous releases will work properly. Note also that there have been significant improvements to DAT over the last release. So even if you install an early release and add the INI-file entries, we cannot guarantee that the devices will work properly.
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