Leaderboard

It's no secret I've been a bit frustrated by Labview's lack of a mid-level api for object oriented programming. .Net and Java have extensive support classes for operations with objects, such as data structures, several kinds of collections, and standard behaviors that can be customized through interfaces. In Labview we have to create our own support classes, which often results in recreating and customizing them for each new project. I've been slowly building up design ideas and a code base for various OOP supporting components, such as an interface framework and collection classes, with the idea of releasing them into the open source community. (Privately I've been referring to them collectively as "LapDog." Why? No idea... it was the first thing that popped into my head.) This is, however, a very slow process for one person who also has the usual work and family commitments, and to be honest, there are aspects of making code ready for public consumption that I'm just not very good at. I don't want LapDog to be a large api that is the Labview equivalent of the .Net framework. I'd prefer to create smaller independent components that provide useful functionality with enough flexibility that the object-oriented developer can extend it to solve their unique problem. This will allow the developer to include only that functionality they need in their project. I anticipate most components will consist of less than a dozen classes. Collections, data structures, and interfaces would likely be the first things we work on. (Primarily because I already have code for those things.) This is just an initial query to see how much need there is for a mid-level api and determine if it's worth my time to set up a public portal for the LapDog source code. If you are interested, please answer the following questions: 1. Would you be interested in using LapDog in your projects? 2. Are you able to help develop, maintain, and support LapDog? If you answer yes to Q.2, please also answer these questions: 3. How much time on average do you think you could spend on this project? (I'm not asking for a commitment, just an estimate.) 4. Given your time constraints and level of knowledge, which role(s) do you think you can fill? Consultant - I don't really have time to help out with dev work but I'm an experienced OO programmer (in any language) and I'd be happy to answer questions or discuss design decisions as my time allows. Architect - I have a working understanding of many of the standard OO design patterns (in any language) and have implemented (or tried to implement) some of them in Labview. I can generally make myself available to respond to issues that will arise when my designs are being implemented and will remain engaged during the entire dev process. Developer - I may not (or may) have much experience with object oriented programming in Labview, but I've been programming for several years, I'm comfortable writing Labview code, and I keep my block diagrams tidy. Tools - I love messing around with scripting and vi server calls! Creating an api for other developers requires different tools than application code; I'd rather work on that than write boring old regular code. Did I mention I love scripting? Documentation & Examples - I recognize good examples and clear explanations are critical to making an api usable. I can put together sample projects that show end users how to use the components in their own projects to solve various problems. Beta Tester - I can't help out with dev work much, but give me a beta component occasionally and I'll happily try to implement something with it and give you feedback on how easy it is to use and any problems I ran into. Graphics - I'm an endangered species among engineers... I have artistic talent! I love creating vi and palette icons, glyphs, animations, etc. I make the most out of the icon editor, but sometimes I'll use a vector graphics program to get the look I'm after. In a pinch I can design a pretty dang good user interface too. These are my initial ideas of different tasks that need to be done to ensure LapDog is a high quality api. I'm under no illusion that lines will be forming to fill these roles, but I do need to have an idea of how many of these tasks can be covered before I'm willing to embark on this journey.

I started writing this post as a question, but found the answer by the time I was done, so I thought I'd make it informative. TortoiseSVN (and probably most other SCC software) will allow you to override the default diff-viewer per file extension or MIME-type, so I was looking for a way to do this is TestStand sequences. I found this snippet in the TestStand help file: So I plugged in a custom viewer for .seq using the path "C:\Program Files\National Instruments\TestStand 4.2\Bin\SequenceFileDiffer.exe" %base %mine. You'll notice this is a little different than prescribed by the help file - first' date=' the executable name is different and second, there are no quotes around the parameters. For whatever reason, putting quotes around the params broke the paths. Even without quotes, though, it works with fairly long paths (135+ characters) which has spaces in it. Another plus, IMO, is the diff that pops up isn't the whole sequence editor - just the pane that shows the diff results. P.S. If you didn't know, TSVN ships with support for diff'ing a whole bunch of MSOffice formats - really handy for comparing documentation revisions! For the truly lazy, here's a registry file to add the diff for you. Take note, I'm using TestStand 4.2! You'll have to rename it to .reg to merge it. TortoiseSVN Diff - seq.txt

Hi, I'm a newbie with labview. I use PIC microcontroller read data from TPA81 8 pixels temperature sensor and then it send all string format via rs232 to LV. My protocol look like this "@32 33 32 11 44 22 33 44 55". (@ is start bit ,, and number are temperature value) I want to use this string to display 8 temperature datas in waveform chart, how should I do with this string??? Best Regards,

I think I know what the issue was with GIT Diff. I stumbled upon the same issues with Mercurial where the remote file was copied into the system temp directory. The LVDiff utility from Sourceforge tries to load both VIs in the same app.space. I edited the diff VI to rename the file in the temp directory. Some more details are on the Mercurial wiki page. Ton

And here's what I've been playing with over the week-end. <object id="scPlayer" width="1024" height="482"> <param name="movie" value="http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/jingh264player.swf"></param>'>http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/jingh264player.swf"></param> <param name="quality" value="high"></param> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"></param> <param name="flashVars" value="thumb=http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/FirstFrame.jpg&containerwidth=1024&containerheight=482&content=http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/drag_n_drop_icons.mp4"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="scale" value="showall"></param> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param> <param name="base" value="http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/"></param>'>http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/"></param> <embed src="http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/jingh264player.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="1024" height="482" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" flashVars="thumb=http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/FirstFrame.jpg&containerwidth=1024&containerheight=482&content=http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/drag_n_drop_icons.mp4" allowFullScreen="true" base="http://content.screencast.com/users/normandinf/folders/Jing/media/5961b00c-fa8b-4d3a-96a9-141f7f42bfdb/" scale="showall"></embed> </object> icons_85.vi (LV8.5, should be linked OK) (BitMan needed ==> install in user.lib)