I am about to begin developing a system that will communicate with about 300 devices via RS-485. I am using the NI PCIe-8431/16, 16 Port RS485/RS422 Serial Interface. I'm using 11 ports, each port has 27 devices on it. Before I start development, I'm really just fishing for some advice on the most efficient/simplest architecture for a program like this. I'd like to monitor output from the devices as often as possible. Based on these outputs, I'd send commands to the devices occasionally. I plan on using the VISA vis for communication.
I'm thinking something like a parallel loop set up where one loop sends commands and the other reads the output. This doesn't seem too tough until I start thinking about how to manage 300 devices across 11 ports! Any advice, examples, or thoughts on setting this up would be much appreciated.
Thanks!