Bug in National Instruments NI-DAQmx 8.7 driver software

National Instruments is a really cool company run by analog folks like us. If you don’t believe what a decent outfit they are, just look at the press release they just did. Turns out there is a bug in their driver software that may give bad analog outputs on some of their hardware. Rather than stick their head in the sand and pretend it didn’t happen, they tell the world about it so you don’t accidentally have a problem using their software and hardware. What a decent company, Bravo! Here is some of the release:

PRODUCT NOTICE: Erroneous Analog Output Values on NI USB-6211, USB-6212, USB-6215, USB-6216, and USB-6218 with NI-DAQmx 8.7 Driver Software

National Instruments recently discovered a bug in NI-DAQmx 8.7 that requires you to download NI-DAQmx 8.7.1 to remedy the error. While NI-DAQmx 8.7 never shipped to customers on CDs, our records indicate that you downloaded NI-DAQmx 8.7 or the February 2008 Driver CD from ni.com between January 23, 2008 and February 14, 2008. Please read the following notification for recommended actions.

Problem Description

When using NI-DAQmx 8.7 driver software, NI USB-621x devices (USB bus-powered M Series multifunction DAQ) may generate unexpected values on the analog output channels. National Instruments released NI-DAQmx 8.7.1 to fix this problem.

This behavior does not occur in previous versions of NI-DAQmx and to our knowledge does not occur with other NI hardware. All software CD kits shipped from NI after the date of this notification contain the corrected version of the driver.

Required Action

NI-DAQmx 8.7.1 should be installed on any computer that currently has version 8.7 installed. Please visit the notification page for a link to download NI-DAQmx 8.7.1 and for more information on this issue.