Keeping a Proven Test Application Alive on Modern Hardware

The problem

A medical manufacturer relied on a measurement application built years earlier on older software and data acquisition drivers. It ran on two kinds of hardware: a card inside a desktop PC, and a card for a laptop slot that new laptops no longer had.

Modern USB data acquisition devices were the obvious replacement for the portable setup, but they need newer drivers the old application couldn’t use. Without an update, the portable system had no future, and nobody wanted to risk the measurement logic that had already been proven in use.

What we built

Only what needed to change. We brought the original source code into a current version of LabVIEW and rewrote just the data acquisition layer for the modern drivers. The tested measurement logic stayed exactly as it was.

One application for every device. A single setting in a configuration file tells the application which hardware it is running on: the existing desktop card, the existing laptop card, or the new USB device. The same software runs on all three.

Proven on site. We deployed the updated application at the client’s facility and tested it against their existing setup before handing it over.

The result

The portable system moved to inexpensive, off-the-shelf USB hardware and any current laptop. The existing stations kept working unchanged, and the client ran one version of the software everywhere, all from a short, focused engagement.