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This utility VI is helpful for filtering out only contained controls in a right-click Affected Items array. [LabVIEW 20xx]\resource\plugins\PopupMenus\support\Filter For Contained Controls Only.vi Many of the shipping right-click plugins use this VI for the exact purpose you describe... for example, check out the source code for the Change To Array Or Element plugin: [LabVIEW 20xx]\resource\plugins\PopupMenus\edit time panel and diagram\Change To Array Or Element.llb\Change To Array Or Element.vi

Realized I never closed the loop on this. It turns out it was a combination of things: intermittent faults in the fiber<->ethernet adapter due to a bad power supply intermittent latency caused by some heavy/spurious network traffic through a switch that was slowing down the TCP traffic throughput After fixing issue number 1, we eventually tracked down number 2 and unfortunately were unable to address as it was related to a separate critical system. Eventually I made some network changes to the cRIO found on this random page from 2009 regarding increasing the TCP buffer size. We've had zero issues in the last 5 months of operation. It feels like a hollow victory though because the LabVIEW TCP calls never threw any errors and my poor attempt at trying to use the system exec VI to monitor the socket memory for increases didn't show anything out of the ordinary, nor did any of the Linux system log/event files. Oh well, at least I sleep better at night now.

LabVIEW, as the Xerox GUI, needs a Steve Jobs... I was an Apple fan back in the 20 MB HDD days. It was only natural to fall in love with LabVIEW as well.🤩

Unfortunately I do think there is a strategy behind this. In the past NI was a company centered around hardware sales in the form of computer plugin cards. The fact that they were a lot better in providing good and well designed supporting software for that hardware was for years a distinguishing factor that made them grow while the competition had a hard catch up game to do and eventually all more or less faltered. The software in itself never really was the money maker, much of it even was given away free with the hardware and was considered a supporting expenditure that was financed with part of the profit for the hardware. When they had pretty much the whole market of what they possibly could get, they run into the problem that there was very little grow in this market anymore for them. So they set out to find new markets and moved towards turn key semiconductor testers that they could sell a dozen a time to the big semiconductor manufacturers for big money. Suddenly those pesky DAQ cards and DAQ boxes were just a margin anymore and they were at best a supporting technology, but the accompanying software was getting more an more a costly burden rather than a supporting technology. Nowadays there isn't one NI marketing but each division has pretty much its own marketing department and is also its independent profit center. And then an independent software/LabVIEW division suddenly shows mainly as a post in the cost category that doesn't bring in as much as it costs. So they try to increase the income but I think they missed that train already 15 years ago when they were refusing to consider other venues for LabVIEW. Nowadays the LabVIEW community is a marginalized small group of enthusiast who are looked at by the rest of the industry as a bunch of crazies who can't let go of their pet IDE and the rest of the world has moved on to Python and .Net and will move on to another hype in a few years. And the higher NI management is likely aware of that. While I do believe that the LabVIEW developers and the managers who directly work there really would like to make LabVIEW a good and flourishing product, I feel the higher management has already decided that this is going to be a dead end and have very little intentions to do anything else than let it bleed to death, so they can get rid of that liability.

June 3 will be my last working day at NI. After almost 22 years, I'm stepping away from the company. Why? I found a G programming job in a field I love. Starting June 20, I'm going to be working at SpaceX on ground control for Falcon and Dragon. This news went public with customers at NI Connect this week. I figured I should post to the wider LabVIEW community here on LAVA. I want to thank you all for being amazing customers and letting me participate vicariously in so many cool engineering projects over the years. I'm still going to be a part of the LabVIEW community, but I'm not going to be making quite such an impact on G users going forward... until the day that they start needing developers on Mars -- remote desktop with a multi-minute delay between mouse clicks is such a pain! 🙂