Leaderboard

I have an app that uses a watchdog built into the motherboard. Failure to tickle the watchdog will trigger a full reboot, with the app automatically restarting and continuing without human intervention. In addition, failure to get data will also trigger restart as a recovery strategy. Still failed at 55 days due to an issue that prevented a Modbus Client to connect and actual get the data from the app. That issue would have been cleared up with an automatic reboot, but detection of that was not considered.

I don't tend to use them unless they have meaning beyond the message itself (ie. they are a natural grouping of data, rather than something that just exists for the message). Most of my messages contain only one piece of data, so no typedef needed (unless that data is naturally a typedef). Also, it is possible to go more than just a typedef: have an API of subVIs to send and receive the messages in a common library. This can be a lot more powerful than just a typedef. An example would be having any message starting with "Config:..." being passed to a Config subVI, with multiple possible messages being handled by that subVI ("Config: Get as JSON","Config: Set from JSON", etc.). Another option is to send an Object that has multiple methods that the receiving actor can use. I view a typedef as a poor cost-benefit trade-off, since you have the coupling issue without the maximum possible benefits.