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Hey folks, I'm going to be taking a year to travel around the world. During this time, I'll be doing LabVIEW on the road for my employer. I have a VPN and access to our source control (thank goodness). However, I've never done remote work before. I think there'll be some challenges in terms of communicating with hardware that's on-site. I'm also concerned about passing questions between myself and the local programmers. For those of you who program remotely, especially in LabVIEW/G, do you have any tips? Suggestions? Pitfalls to avoid? Best practices to maintain? Utilities or apps that have come in handy? Thanks.

It should be pointed out if you're doing any remote coding that the LabVIEW IDE requires a bit more finesse over a remote desktop connection since it's (obviously) more graphic based than other languages. Ideally its best to keep your code development local and just drop the final product onto the remote machine, but If you need run a debugging session remotely because of an interface to some piece of hardware, you're probably going to grow annoyed. I have to do this from time to time, and usually do one of two things: open the code remotely, probe and take notes, then go back to my local machine to modify the code, commit/build/whatever then finally update the remote copy and iterate as need be. Or code in a plethora of debugging displays into your application so you can just distribute it and have access to as much debug info as needed.

Use your mobile phone for wifi tethering (3G is about 2Mb up/down). Hotels usually require you to go through a webpage access gateway which wont work for VPN and besides, you can then work on trains, coaches or whilst having a beer cofee in the local . 3G dongles are OK, but make sure it is one that accepts a SIM rather than locked to a provider otherwise you will have to get a new one for each country you visit (phones are just easier). Get your IT to set it all up and test it BEFORE you go and SMS all the settings to your phone. For cheaper calls/internet I've always found it a lot, lot cheaper to buy SIMs (usually free) in the country with top-up cards (roaming charges are sometimes 10-20 times the local prices). It also has the advantage that you don't have to try and find coverage for an in-country provider that is buddied with your home provider so you can choose the best service (ask the locals). You can then claim it all back on expenses Companies love their VPN systems but the best system I have ever used, by far, is Hamachi. We could transparently remote desktop in via satellite to PXI racks sitting on oil rigs in the Gulf of Thailand just as easily as to the lab next door. They just appeared as nodes within 2 mins of getting the satellite dish up and running. The field engineers just went from one platform to another setting them up whilst I sat in the air conditioned comfort of the beach hotel (WiFi teathered) and configured them as they appeared Another point. It's always useful to have some sort of Chat program on the PCs you are supporting. If you are troubleshooting and it requires some human input, you can paste snippets, passwords, and error messages to each other much more easily than talking about it, especially if the PC is nowhere near a usable phone..