Using NI DAQ hardware with a Mac
NI-DAQmx has no macOS support and NI-DAQmx Base stopped at macOS 10.14, so NI hardware reaches a Mac through Windows or a PC on the network.
Plenty of engineers work on Macs in labs full of National Instruments cDAQ chassis, USB-6000 series devices and PXI systems. NI-DAQmx, the driver every modern NI DAQ device depends on, does not support macOS.
For years NI shipped a Mac option, NI-DAQmx Base. According to NI’s own compatibility page, its last version was 15.0 and it is compatible with macOS 10.14 and earlier. The product has reached end of life.
That leaves four setups.
1. Boot Camp on an Intel Mac
If you still have an Intel Mac, Boot Camp runs Windows natively and NI-DAQmx installs as it would on any PC. You reboot to take a measurement, and Apple Silicon Macs don’t support Boot Camp at all.
2. A Windows virtual machine
A VM with USB passthrough can work on an Intel Mac. On Apple Silicon you are running the ARM edition of Windows, and NI-DAQmx is built for x86 Windows, so check NI’s current support notes before you buy hardware or plan a test around it. Network-attached chassis avoid USB passthrough but still need the driver running somewhere it is supported.
3. Remote desktop into a bench PC
Keep a Windows PC next to the hardware, run NI’s software there and remote in from your Mac. Many labs work this way and it is dependable. The data, configuration and charts all live on the other machine, live plots lag over remote desktop, and every file has to be copied back for analysis.
4. Stream the hardware to your Mac with DAQAtlas Bridge
DAQAtlas Bridge, in development alongside DAQAtlas, is a small command-line agent that runs on a Windows PC or a supported Linux machine next to the NI hardware. It uses NI-DAQmx locally, where the driver is supported, and serves the devices to DAQAtlas over the network. On your Mac, the NI channels appear in the device list next to your other hardware, and recordings made in DAQAtlas are saved on the Mac.
The bridge also serves any other backend it can load, so the same agent can share MCC devices from a Linux PC or Raspberry Pi, or LabJack and Digilent hardware attached to another computer. NI-DAQmx itself doesn’t run on a Raspberry Pi, so NI hardware needs a Windows or Linux PC.
The bridge listens on TCP port 47811 and announces itself on UDP 47810, so open those on the bench machine’s firewall. Run it on a network you trust or over a VPN, and give it a token with --token so only your copy of DAQAtlas can connect.
Which setup should you pick?
- One-off measurement on an Intel Mac: Boot Camp.
- NI hardware that stays on one bench and one person uses it: remote desktop is fine.
- NI hardware alongside MCC, LabJack or Digilent devices, or a team on Macs: the bridge keeps everything in one recording on the machine you work on.
DAQAtlas is in development and opening to beta testers. If NI hardware is the reason you still keep a Windows laptop on your desk, sign up and tell us which devices you run, since that decides what we test first.