My name is Bradley, I am a research scientist from Mark Histed’s group. Though I’ve been with Mark for a while, I don’t think we’ve met. =)
We are thinking of upgrading our LabJack hardware and was wondering if the T8 device is/or can be supported by MWorks? The T8 uses the LJM library, and its’ documentation appears to be combined with the T4 and T7 devices. If it’s an easy add for MWorks, we may lean towards future proofing our LabJack purchase by going with T8s over T7s (or a combination of the two where the application warrants faster acquisition). Happy to get your thoughts. Thanks for your help.
At present, MWorks can’t support the T8, because (according to the T8 Release Status) the T8 is currently supported only on Windows and Linux, not macOS.
If/when LabJack releases a version of the LJM library that supports both the T8 and macOS, I’ll need to update MWorks’ LabJack interface with device-specific details for the T8. Assuming the T8’s control interface is similar to the T4 and T7, this shouldn’t be much work.
At that point, MWorks will support the T8. For the present, though, you’re limited to using the T4 or T7 with MWorks.
If T8 Mac support is not on the horizon for Labjack, that’s bad for us- it might imply Labjack is giving up on the Mac. Perhaps it’s worth reaching out to them to see if T8 Mac support is on their roadmap.
I reached out to LabJack about Mac support for the T8 DAQ and they sent me a link to the drivers. Their full response and link are attached below.
Would you please look at the T8 drivers and let us know if T8 support can be added to MWorks. Based on your assessment we are prepared to order a T8 to use/test with MWorks on our M1 iMac.
I took a look at the pre-release driver package. The API hasn’t changed at all from the current macOS beta release (2021_04_01_beta) that I build against. I still need to add T8-specific info to the MWorks LJM plugin, but that should be the only code change required. It’s also great that they’ll be providing native drivers for M1/M2 processors.
If possible, I’d prefer to wait until the full release of new macOS drivers before I update the MWorks plugin. But if you want to start testing the T8 before then (particularly if the predicted “next few weeks” time frame ends up being longer), I can update the plugin to work with the pre-release drivers.
Thanks for looking! I just placed an order for a T8, they are in-stock, so we expect to have it in a week or two. I would like to start testing it when it arrives, so would be in favor of adding support for the T8 even with the beta drivers. You rightly point out, who knows what a “few weeks” means to the company. =)
Just let us know when you’ve updated MWorks. We will report back if have any issues during testing. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Support for the T8 is now in the MWorks nightly build.
The LabJackLJM plugin now supports both arm64 (M1, M2) and x86_64 (Intel). The former is built against the latest, Apple-Silicon-only LJM beta, while the latter is built against the previous, Intel-only beta. I’ve tested my T7 on both architectures, and everything seems to work as expected. I haven’t tested a T8 (which I don’t have), but hopefully that will work, too.
Note that the latest LJM beta libraries are not code signed correctly. When testing on macOS Ventura, I got pop-ups saying that they couldn’t be loaded because they can’t be checked for malicious software. To get them to load, I had to quit MWServer, go in to System Preferences → Privacy & Security, and click “Allow” next to the library name. Note that you might have to do this twice, once each for libLabJackM.dylib and libusb-1.0.0.dylib. After that, you shouldn’t need to do it again.
If you need some examples of how to use LabJack LJM devices with MWorks, you can check out my test experiments, which are installed in /Library/Application Support/MWorks/Developer/tests/XML/IODevice/LabJackLJM. If you run in to any issues, please let me know!